الفهرس 
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Abstract
Chemical process design is never an easy task. it is usually carried out based on the nominal operating condition with economic attractiveness being maximized. however, economic consideration alone is not enough to ensure process successfulness. a design without considering process operability can result into disastrous outcomes. operability can be classified into four categories, they are : flexibility, reliability, safety and controllability. this thesis will study the flexibility in heat exchanger network by three major trends first : use fuzzy analogical gates to select the optimal design of heat exchanger network in steady stead. second : study the behavior of disturbances in the target temperature when inlet flow rate variations, and what is ability or flexibility of heat exchangers network to meet the design requirement at new operating conditions. third : estimate the heat exchanger network flexibility index by using a statistical method. this method identifies the true value under uncertainty. method was applied on three published cases and their results were compared with the flexibility index for large heat exchanger network.