Air-side heat transfer enhancement by self-agitators
Airfoil-based self-agitators (AFAs), bio-inspired rectangular-shaped self-agitators (RSAs), and caudal-fin inspired hourglass-shaped self-agitators (CHSAs) were installed inside plate-fin heat exchanger. The heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop characteristics of these AFAs, RSAs, CHSAs design were experimentally investigated and compared with the clean channel case. We found that the self-agitators vibrate periodically and generate vortices, which enhance flow mixing and thus heat transfer performance. For the chosen heat sink and assigned working conditions, the best heat transfer performance was obtained with four rows AFAs, which caused an 80% increase in overall Nusselt Number over the clean channel at same Reynolds Number, and a 50% rejected heat increase at the same pumping power due to the strong longitudinal vortices generated by the presence of the AFAs. Experiments were conducted at a wide range of Reynolds numbers from 400 to 10000, which covered laminar-transitional-turbulent regime with CHSAs. Experimental correlations of the pressure drop as a function of dimension parameter and friction factor and Nusselt number as functions of dimensionless ones have been proposed. Mutual coupling motions and effects of multiple-row flapping CHSAs in parallel and tandem configurations were studied by using a high-speed camera. A stereo Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system was used to conduct detailed flow field measurements to quantify the flow mixing level. For the chosen plate-fin heat exchanger and assigned working conditions, the best heat transfer performance was obtained with six-row CHSAs with a pitch of 25mm, which caused a 200% increase in the Nusselt number over the clean channel at the same Reynolds number. However, the best overall performance was obtained with twelve-row CHSAs with a pitch of 12.5mm, which caused a 68% enhancement in thermal-hydraulic characteristic compared to the clean channel at the same Reynolds number.