AERO / HX-02B / CANDIDATE SEARCH
SELECTED / PRE-EXECUTIONA replacement benchmark earned selection.
Aero screened 13 credible sources instead of reopening the Kim HX-02 stop. Zhang et al.'s open sodium/supercritical-CO₂ PCHE study earned a bounded thermal-fluid selection because its geometry, operating conditions and measurement definitions are coherent in one source.
Program decision: HX02B_SELECTED
What HX-02B will test
Hot/cold inlet and outlet temperatures, two-side heat-duty balance, overall U, and a bounded wall-temperature trend. Pressure-drop scoring, wall-material CHT truth and FEA are explicitly outside this revision.
Why this candidate survived
| Gate | Disposition |
|---|---|
| Two-stream experiment | PASS — sodium / supercritical CO₂ prototype |
| Geometry and operating point | ADEQUATE — core/channel dimensions and matched ranges |
| Thermal truth | STRONG — inlet/outlet measurements and heat-duty balance |
| Pressure-drop truth | EXCLUDED — not reported as a selected observable |
| Wall material / FEA | EXCLUDED — source definition is incomplete |
| Blind separation | CONDITIONAL PASS — result-bearing material sealed |
Stopped before solving
The visible packet and local sealed reference are frozen for human review. Luna, first-principles prediction, CFD, FEA and experimental reveal have not run. This prevents the candidate search from turning into a tuned reproduction.