Numerical Study of a Compact Wavy Heat Exchanger

Author(s):  
Riccardo Mereu ◽  
Emanuela Colombo ◽  
Fabio Inzoli

The present work deals with the design of compact wavy heat exchangers, where high values of heat transfer area per unit volume are looked for in order to reduce size and increase efficiency. A numerical investigation of a rectangular cross-sectional shape geometry, with duct aspect ratio of 7.3, and a corrugation angle of 145° is here proposed. The Reynolds numbers (based on the duct hydraulic diameter) range from 300 to 5000. The numerical analysis is performed by means of a finite volume commercial CFD code. Laminar and Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (U-RANS) approaches are applied to a three-dimensional fluid domain over a single module with periodic conditions, respectively for, lower (<1000) and higher (≥1000) Reynolds numbers. Mean velocity and temperature fields are obtained. The average values of Fanning friction factor and Nusselt number are compared with experimental data from literature for the same geometry operating at the same Reynolds number range. For the evaluation of heat transfer quantities obtained in the numerical study the analogy between Sherwood and Nusselt number is used. The numerical results agree with experimental data, by showing the capability of laminar and U-RANS two-equation approach, via RNG model, to capture the mean fluid flow including the Taylor-Gortler instability that appear at low Reynolds numbers. The qualitative comparison of heat results shows an agreement between experimental and numerical data, whereas the extension to quantitative comparison is limited by some deficiencies in experimental correlation for mass/heat transfer analogy.

Author(s):  
Salaika Parvin ◽  
Nepal Chandra Roy ◽  
Litan Kumar Saha ◽  
Sadia Siddiqa

A numerical study is performed to investigate nanofluids' flow field and heat transfer characteristics between the domain bounded by a square and a wavy cylinder. The left and right walls of the cavity are at constant low temperature while its other adjacent walls are insulated. The convective phenomena take place due to the higher temperature of the inner corrugated surface. Super elliptic functions are used to transform the governing equations of the classical rectangular enclosure into a system of equations valid for concentric cylinders. The resulting equations are solved iteratively with the implicit finite difference method. Parametric results are presented in terms of streamlines, isotherms, local and average Nusselt numbers for a wide range of scaled parameters such as nanoparticles concentration, Rayleigh number, and aspect ratio. Several correlations have been deduced at the inner and outer surface of the cylinders for the average Nusselt number, which gives a good agreement when compared against the numerical results. The strength of the streamlines increases significantly due to an increase in the aspect ratio of the inner cylinder and the Rayleigh number. As the concentration of nanoparticles increases, the average Nusselt number at the internal and external cylinders becomes stronger. In addition, the average Nusselt number for the entire Rayleigh number range gets enhanced when plotted against the volume fraction of the nanofluid.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 592-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. S. Zhao ◽  
P. Cheng

An experimental and numerical study has been carried out for laminar forced convection in a long pipe heated by uniform heat flux and subjected to a reciprocating flow of air. Transient fluid temperature variations in the two mixing chambers connected to both ends of the heated section were measured. These measurements were used as the thermal boundary conditions for the numerical simulation of the hydrodynamically and thermally developing reciprocating flow in the heated pipe. The coupled governing equations for time-dependent convective heat transfer in the fluid flow and conduction in the wall of the heated tube were solved numerically. The numerical results for time-resolved centerline fuid temperature, cycle-averaged wall temperature, and the space-cycle averaged Nusselt number are shown to be in good agreement with the experimental data. Based on the experimental data, a correlation equation is obtained for the cycle-space averaged Nusselt number in terms of appropriate dimensionless parameters for a laminar reciprocating flow of air in a long pipe with constant heat flux.


Author(s):  
Elizaveta Ivanova ◽  
Gregory M. Laskowski

This paper presents the results of a numerical study on the predictive capabilities of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and hybrid RANS/LES methods for heat transfer, mean velocity, and turbulence in a fundamental trailing edge slot. The geometry represents a landless slot (two-dimensional wall jet) with adjustable slot lip thickness. The reference experimental data taken from the publications of Kacker and Whitelaw [1] [2] [3] [4] contains the adiabatic wall effectiveness together with the velocity and the Reynolds-stress profiles for various blowing ratios and slot lip thicknesses. The simulations were conducted at three different lip thickness and several blowing ratio values. The comparison with the experimental data shows a general advantage of LES and hybrid RANS/LES methods against unsteady RANS. The predictive capability of the tested LES models (dynamic ksgs-equation [5] and WALE [6]) was comparable. The Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES) hybrid method [7] also shows satisfactory agreement with the experimental data. In addition to the described baseline investigations, the influence of the inlet turbulence boundary conditions and their implication for the initial mixing layer and heat transfer development were studied for both LES and IDDES.


Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Alenezi ◽  
Abdulrahman Almutairi ◽  
Hamad Alhajeri ◽  
Abdulaziz Gamil ◽  
Faisal Alshammari

Abstract A detailed heat transfer numerical study of a three-dimensional impinging jet on a roughened isothermal surface is presented and is investigated from flow physics vantage point under the influence of different parameters. The effects of the Reynolds number, roughness location, and roughness dimension on the flow physics and heat transfer parameters are studied. Additionally, the relations between average heat transfer coefficient (AHTC) and flow physics including pressure, wall shear and flow vortices with thermodynamic nonequilibrium are offered. This paper studies the effect of varying both location and dimension of the roughness element which took the shape of square cross-sectional continuous ribs to deliver a favorable trade-off between total pressure loss and heat transfer rate. The roughness element was tested for three different radial locations (R/D) = 1, 1.5, and 2 and at each location its height (i.e., width) (e) was changed from 0.25 to 1 mm in incremental steps of 0.25. The study used a jet angle (α) of 90 deg, jet-to-target distance (H/D = 6), and Re ranges from 10,000 to 50,000, where H is the vertical distance between the target plate and jet exit. The results show that the AHTC can be significantly affected by changing the geometry and dimensions of the roughness element. This variation can be either an augmentation of, or decrease in, the (HTC) when compared with the baseline case. An enhancement of 12.9% in the AHTC was achieved by using optimal location and dimensions of the roughness element at specific Reynolds number. However, a diminution between 10% and 30% in (AHTC) was attained by the use of rib height e = 1 mm at Re = 50k. The variation of both rib location and height showed better contribution in increasing heat transfer for low-range Reynolds numbers.


Author(s):  
S. Gilchrist ◽  
C. Y. Ching ◽  
D. Ewing

An experimental investigation was performed to determine the effect that surface roughness has on the heat transfer in an axial Taylor-Couette flow. The experiments were performed using an inner rotating cylinder in a stationary water jacket for Taylor numbers of 106 to 5×107 and axial Reynolds numbers of 900 to 2100. Experiments were performed for a smooth inner cylinder, a cylinder with two-dimensional rib roughness and a cylinder with three-dimensional cubic protrusions. The heat transfer results for the smooth cylinder were in good agreement with existing experimental data. The change in the Nusselt number was relatively independent of the axial Reynolds number for the cylinder with rib roughness. This result was similar to the smooth wall case but the heat transfer was enhanced by 5% to 40% over the Taylor number range. The Nusselt number for the cylinder with cubic protrusions exhibited an axial Reynolds number dependence. For a low axial Reynolds number of 980, the Nusselt number increased with the Taylor number in a similar way to the other test cylinders. At higher axial Reynolds numbers, the heat transfer was initially independent of the Taylor number before increasing with Taylor number similar to the lower Reynolds number case. In this higher axial Reynolds number case the heat transfer was enhanced by up to 100% at the lowest Taylor number of 1×106 and by approximately 35% at the highest Taylor number of 5×107.


Author(s):  
F. Kowsary ◽  
N. Noroozi ◽  
M. Rezaei Barmi

The increased power dissipation and reduced dimensions of microelectronics devices have emphasized the need for highly efficient compact cooling technologies. Microchannel heat sinks are of particular interest due to the very high rates of heat transfer they enable in conjunction with greatly reduced heat sink length scales and coolant mass flow rate. Therefore, in the present work, optimization of laminar convective heat transfer in the microchannel heat sinks is investigated for uniform heat flux and different cross sectional areas of different aspect ratios. Three-dimensional numerical simulations of general form of energy equation were performed to predict Nusselt number in the laminar flow regime. Using these results, an optimum forced convective heat transfer coefficient was computed for several cross sectional areas and Reynolds numbers, utilizing the univariable search method. Different aspect ratios have different influences on Nusselt number in thermally developing and fully developed regions for different cross sectional areas and Reynolds numbers. There exists an optimum Nusselt number for each Reynolds number and cross sectional area by varying aspect ratio. Thus, optimized state is computed and related graphs are presented.


2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Bagchi ◽  
M. Y. Ha ◽  
S. Balachandar

Direct numerical solution for flow and heat transfer past a sphere in a uniform flow is obtained using an accurate and efficient Fourier-Chebyshev spectral collocation method for Reynolds numbers up to 500. We investigate the flow and temperature fields over a range of Reynolds numbers, showing steady and axisymmetric flow when the Reynolds number is less than 210, steady and nonaxisymmetric flow without vortex shedding when the Reynolds number is between 210 and 270, and unsteady three-dimensional flow with vortex shedding when the Reynolds number is above 270. Results from three-dimensional simulation are compared with the corresponding axisymmetric simulations for Re>210 in order to see the effect of unsteadiness and three-dimensionality on heat transfer past a sphere. The local Nusselt number distribution obtained from the 3D simulation shows big differences in the wake region compared with axisymmetric one, when there exists strong vortex shedding in the wake. But the differences in surface-average Nusselt number between axisymmetric and three-dimensional simulations are small owing to the smaller surface area associated with the base region. The shedding process is observed to be dominantly one-sided and as a result axisymmetry of the surface heat transfer is broken even after a time-average. The one-sided shedding also results in a time-averaged mean lift force on the sphere.


1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Greiner ◽  
R.-F. Chen ◽  
R. A. Wirtz

Earlier experiments have shown that cutting transverse grooves into one surface of a rectangular cross-sectional passage stimulates flow instabilities that greatly enhance heat transfer/pumping power performance of air flows in the Reynolds number range 1000 < Re < 5000. In the current work, heat transfer, pressure, and velocity measurements in a flat passage downstream from a grooved region are used to study how the flow recovers once it is disturbed. The time-averaged and unsteady velocity profiles, as well as the heat transfer coefficient, are dramatically affected for up to 20 hydraulic diameters past the end of the grooved section. The recovery lengths for shear stress and pressure gradient are significantly shorter and decrease rapidly for Reynolds numbers greater than Re = 3000. As a result, a 5.4-hydraulic-diameter-long recovery region requires 44 percent less pumping power for a given heat transfer level than if grooving continued.


Author(s):  
Pamela A. McDowell ◽  
William D. York ◽  
D. Keith Walters ◽  
James H. Leylek

A newly developed unsteady turbulence model was used to predict heat transfer in a turbulated passage typical of turbine airfoil cooling applications. Comparison of fullyconverged computational solutions to experimental measurements reveal that accurate prediction of heat transfer coefficient requires the effects of local small-scale unsteadiness to be captured. Validation was accomplished through comparison of the time- and area-averaged Nusselt number on the passage wall between adjacent ribs with experimental data from the open literature. The straight channel had a square cross-sectional area with multiple rows of staggered and rounded-edge ribs on opposite walls that were orthogonal to the flow. Simulations were run for Reynolds numbers of 5500, 16500, and 25000. Computational solutions were obtained on a multi-block, multi-topology, unstructured, and adaptive grid, using a pressure-correction based, fully-implicit Navier-Stokes solver. The computational results include two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) steady and unsteady simulations with viscous sublayers resolved (y+ ≤ 1) on all the walls in every case. Turbulence closure was obtained using a new turbulence model developed in-house for the unsteady simulations, and a realizable k-ε turbulence model was used for the steady simulations. The results obtained from the unsteady simulations show greatly improved agreement with the experimental data, especially at realistically high Reynolds numbers. The key 3-D physics mechanisms responsible for the successful outcome include: (1) shear layer roll-up over the turbulators; (2) recirculation zones both upstream and downstream of the rib faces; and (3) reattachment regions between each rib pair. Results from the unsteady case are superior to those of the steady because they capture the aforementioned mechanisms, and therefore more accurately predict the heat transfer.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adnan Alhathal Alanezi ◽  
Mohammad Reza Safaei ◽  
Marjan Goodarzi ◽  
Yasser Elhenawy

In this numerical study, a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) system has been modeled considering various angles for the membrane unit and the Reynolds number range of 500 to 2000. A two-dimensional model developed based on the Navier–Stokes, energy, and species transport equations were used. The governing equations were solved using the finite volume method (FVM). The results showed that with an increase in the Reynolds number of up to 1500, the heat transfer coefficient for all membrane angles increases, except for the inclination angle of 60°. Also, an increase in the membrane angle up to 90° causes the exit influence to diminish and the heat transfer to be augmented. Such findings revealed that the membrane inclination angle of 90° (referred to as the vertical membrane) with Reynolds number 2000 could potentially have the lowest temperature difference. Likewise, within the Reynolds numbers of 1000 and 2000, by changing the inclination angle of the membrane, temperature difference remains constant, however, for Reynolds numbers up to 500, the temperature difference reduces intensively.


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