Optimisation Study to Reduce Weight of Tube Sheet for Spiral Wound Heat Exchanger based on ANSYS

Abstract Tube sheet is the key pressure-bearing part in the spiral wound heat exchanger, and the high-strength and light-weight tube sheet structure is of great engineering significance for the development of a large-scale heat exchanger. In order to further realize the lightweight of the spiral-wound heat exchanger, this paper analyzes the influence of the thickness of the heat exchanger tube sheet on its strength based on the Ansys software and proposes the optimization design method of the tube sheet based on the strength safety factor F, which solves the problem that the software cannot take the stress linearization result as the state variable in the optimization calculation. The optimization results show that the thickness of the tube sheet is reduced by 40%. At this time, the stress strength at the connection between the tube sheet and the head and the center of the tube sheet first exceeds the design bearing capacity, indicating that the strength conditions of the two places are the controlling factors of the thickness. The results are important for the lightweight design of heat exchanger tube plate and material saving.