Numerical Investigation of Tub Side Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in Helically Corrugated Tubes

Authors

• S Hossainpour ¹
• R Hassanzadeh ²

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz 51325-1996, Iran

² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University Tabriz Branch, Iran

Abstract

This paper presents a three-dimensional numerical investigation carried out in turbulent forced convection in a tube with helical ribs. Enhancement of heat transfer using helically corrugated tubes has been
studied experimentally by many researchers but there exist a few published numerical analyses results. The paper also introduces the results of heat transfer and friction factor data for incompressible fluid flow
in a tube with 24 mm inside diameter and Reynolds numbers between 25000-80000. The geometric parameters of single start internally ribbed tubes are, rib height to diameter ratio ranging from 0.02 to 0.06
and rib pitch to diameter ratio ranging from 0.6 to 1.2. The inlet water temperature is 10oC and tube wall is at 80oC uniform temperature. Tube side, three-dimensional turbulent flow has been simulated using a
finite volume code and the results are compared with available experimental data. It has been shown that the helical ribs have a significant effect on the heat transfer augmentation and pressure drop.

Keywords

• Heat transfer enhancement
• helical rib
• corrugated tube
• friction factor
• Turbulent flow

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