Heat transfer enhancement comparisons in different tube shapes

Abstract

The importance of heat transfer enhancement in industrial applications has led to several studies on how to reduce the size and cost of heat exchangers as well as other heat transport devices. Corrugations helped to increase heat transfer rates to achieve certain limits for a specific need or application. Therefore, in this study, a passive heat transfer technique for three different spiral corrugation shapes was employed, the heat transfer and pressure drop problem simulated by Computational Fluid Dynamics at Reynolds Number range of 100-1300. Water was used as a working fluid, three different tubes with different corrugation profile were simulated numerically, finally, the results compared with those results of a standard smooth tube. The results indicated that the whole three geometries have good heat transfer rate performance, especially curvy corrugation, which has the best thermal performance among the others of 2.5-0.6 among the others which are about 2.3-0.39 and 2.15-0.27 respectively. Furthermore, it has the best heat transfer enhancement and less pressure drop of 51.3% and 38.1%. It also concluded that the major influential reason to get better thermal performance is the corrugation shape and profile, as well as, these corrugation characteristics affects the pressure drop.