We consider the prediction of the performance of an air-water fin-tube compact heat exchanger using correlations of the power-law type. Measurements of the in-tube and over-tube mass flow rates, inlet temperatures and heat transfer rates, with water as the in-tube fluid and air as the over-tube fluid, are used to show that a regression analysis for the best-fit correlation of a prescribed form does not provide a unique answer in the heat rate predictions and that a global, rather than a local, search for the best correlation should be conducted. To this end, we propose the application of three different global optimization techniques to find the constants in a prescribed correlating function which can then be used to predict the performance of this heat exchanger under different operating conditions. Comparisons of the different results are then made to determine the relative advantages and disadvantages among the methods in terms of efficiency, accuracy and certainty of the results. Every method is found to have advantages over the others, and the results demonstrate that all three techniques are able to predict well the performance of this heat exchanger.
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