Plate Fin and Tube Heat Exchanger Modeling: Effects of Performance Parameters for Turbulent Flow Regime

Abstract

In the current study, the air-side turbulent thermal and hydraulic characteristics of finned tube heat exchanger of staggered tube arrangement are simulated with steadystate solvers using ANSYS CFX12.0, a Commercial CFD code for turbulent flow regimes. The k-ω model was used to predict the turbulent flow characteristics through the finned tube heat exchanger. The level of confidence of this numerical model was based on a comparison with previous experimental data from the literature, comparing the friction factor f and Colburn factor j, and reasonable agreement is found between the simulations and experimental data. Detailed analysis of the effect of thermal and hydraulic performance of related parameters such as longitudinal pitch, transverse pitch, and fin pitch are also critically evaluated for turbulent flow regime. The increase in the longitudinal pitch and transverse pitch causes a decrease in the heat transfer and pressure drop performance as the flow becomes free and less compact with the increase in the tube pitch. The effect of fin pitch on the heat exchanger performance demonstrates that a decrease in the fin pitch shows the opposite performance to that of the longitudinal and transverse pitches.