Reply To: Meshing Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

[Rob]

You've got a few problems here. 

Each tube needs mesh resolution across it, but if you stretch swept mesh as we would for a pipe the high aspect ratio cell on the wall will cause problems with the tet region in the shell side. The cell count on the tubes is also going to be fairly high. 

There are ways around this if you look into domain decomposition. It's an older technique that can come in very useful for this situation. 

Another option: do you really need to model tubeside? What is the purpose of the simulation?