Abstract:
The improvements in heat exchanger performance have long attracted many researchers as they are of great technical, economic, and ecological significance. The performance of the fin-and-tube heat exchanger (FTHE) can be enhanced with the change of design of compact heat exchanger. The main focus of changing the design is to increase or decrease the temperature and enhance heat transfer from one fluid to another. The key incentive of current research is to investigate the influence of various vortex generator in the FTHE and the parameters that enhance the thermal and hydraulic performance in the FTHE such as the geometry and arrangement. Three different geometry arrangement of corrugated profiles in FTHE such as ONCF (corrugated fin with one fluted domain), TWCF (corrugated fin with two fluted domains), and THCF (corrugated fin with three fluted domains) shapes are investigated by a parametric design exploration technique. The main objective of this research is to conduct the numerical analysis in compact fin and tube heat exchanger and to study thermal–hydraulic performance characteristics in FTHE with introducing new design of fins (ONCF,TWCF,THCF) and tube, determine the effect of different size and shape of vortex generator (VGs) by using computational fluid dynamics approach. The main purpose of introducing such design is to increased thermal efficiency and performance criteria of FTHE. The introduction of vortex generators behind tubes resulted in heat transfer augmentation but come together with higher pressure drop penalty which enhance the performance. The investigation of thermal–hydraulic performance criteria is conducted for Reynolds number in the range of 200–900. The outcomes of study indicated that the average Nusselt number for the FTCHE with corrugated fin can be increased up to 23%. The newly designed oval-tube fin with 3mm square shaped VGs shows a potential increase in the efficiency of the heating transfer and a mild pressure loss on the FTCHE compared to the other model.
