On the Fully-Developed Heat Transfer Enhancing Flow Field in Sinusoidally, Spirally Corrugated Tubes Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate heat transfer enhancing flow field in 28 geometrically different sinusoidally, spirally corrugated tubes. To vary the corrugation, the height of corrugation e/D and the length between two successive corrugated sections p/D are varied in the ranges 0–0.16 and 0–2.0 respectively. The 3D Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations combined with the transition SST turbulence model are solved using the finite volume method to obtain the fully-developed flow field in a repeatable section of the heat exchangers at a constant wall temperature and at Re=10,000. By studying the wide range of geometrically different tubes, the flow conditions vary significantly.

At low corrugation heights, only a weak secondary flow centred in the corrugated section is present. At higher corrugations heights, the tangential velocity component increases and eventually exceeds the axial velocity component causing the highest pressure to be located at the centre of the corrugated section. At these high corrugation heights, a further increase in corrugation height will at best only result in a small increase in Nusselt number but at a significantly higher pressure loss. To assess the performance as a heat exchanger, the ratio of enhanced Nusselt number to enhanced friction factor η=(Nu/Nu_s)/(f/f_s)^(1/3) compared to the non-corrugated tube is used. Using this parameter, the simulations show a decrease in performance at higher corrugation heights. To link the detailed flow fields to the performance as a heat exchanger, non-dimensional correlations for heat transfer, pressure loss, and performance parameter are given.