Experimental investigation of the flow distribution of a 2-dimensional constructal distributor

The flow distribution behavior of a plate-type constructal flow distributor, which has one inlet and 16 outlets and is designed according to constructal theory to achieve uniform flow distribution with smallest energy dissipation and shortest residence time, is investigated by experiments. When all the outlets are open, the standard flow rate deviation changes from 0.050 to 0.069 and the maximal flow rate ratio, i.e. the ratio of the highest flow rate to the lowest, changes from 1.170 to 1.252 when the averaged Re at the outlet increases from 1020 to 2247. Blocking one or two outlets of one branch will generally decrease the uniformity of the flow distribution, and it will have more influences on the rest outlets of the same branch than on the outlets of other branches.