Title: Simulation of heat transfer enhancement in tube flow with twisted tape insert

Authors: Suvanjan Bhattacharyya; Himadri Chattopadhyay; Ali Cemal Benim

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata – 700032, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata – 700032, India ' CFS, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences, D-40474 Duesseldorf, Germany

Abstract: Heat transfer behaviour in a tube with inserted twisted tape swirl generator is investigated numerically, for different values of the twist ratio and diameter ratio and for Reynolds numbers within the range 100-20,000. The transition-SST model is used as the turbulence model. The computational model is validated, first, on a plain tube, where a good agreement is achieved with the correlations. The subsequent analysis of the tube with twisted tape indicates that the use of twist tape enhances heat transfer generally, which is accompanied by a higher pressure drop. It is observed that an improvement of the thermal-hydraulic performance can only be observed for certain configurations and Reynolds numbers.

Keywords: turbulent flow; twisted tape; swirl flow; heat transfer; heat exchanger; forced convection.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2017.084356

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2017 Vol.17 No.3, pp.193 - 197

Published online: 06 Jun 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article