Numerical Study on Heat Transfer and Flow Characteristics for Laminar Flow in a Circular Tube with Swirl Generators

This study investigated the heat transfer and flow characteristics of one kind of swirlgenerator in a circular heat exchanger tube through a numericalsimulation. The swirlflow induced by this type of swirlgenerator can obtain a high heat transfer rate with minimalpressure drop penalty. The simulations were carried out to understand the physicalbehavior of this kind of mesoscale heat enhancement component. By visualizing the heat transfer and flow characteristics, it is found that the swirlflow is induced by swirlgenerator in the circular tube couples with the impinging jet effect. After passing through the swirlgenerator, the localfriction factor of liquid can quickly return to lower levelmore quickly, while the localNusselt number maintains higher values for a distance; thus, the evaluation criterion of localperformance is improved. Single-factor optimization is used for three geometric parameters, i.e., the angle of swirlgenerator(25o, 45o, and 60o), the length of swirlgenerator(0.005, 0.01, and 0.02 m), and the center rod radius(1, 2, and 3 mm). The optimum parameters of the swirlgenerator for laminar flow of air in a circular tube are obtained, which should be 60o, 0.005 m, and 3 mm, respectively.

Thermohydraulics of Turbulent Flow Through Heat Exchanger Tubes Fitted with Circular-rings and Twisted Tapes

The influences of circular-ring turbulators （CRT） and twisted tape （TT） swirl generators on the heat transfer enhancement, pressure drop and thermal performance factor characteristics in a round tube are reported. The circular-ring turbulators were individually employed and together with the twisted tape swirl generators in the heated section of the tube. Three different pitch ratios （I/D = 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0） of the CRT and three different twist ratios （y/W= 3, 4, and 5） of the TT were introduced. The experiments were conducted using air as the working fluid under a uniform wall heat flux condition, for the Reynolds number between 6000 and 20000. The experimental results reveal that the heat transfer rate, friction factor and thermal performance factor of the combined CRT and qT are considerably higher than those of CRT alone. For the range examined, the Sncreases of mean Nusselt number, friction factor and thermal performance, in the tube equipped with combined devices, respectively, are 25.8%, 82.8% and 6.3% over those in the tube with the CRT alone. The highest thermal performance factor of 1.42 is found for the combined device consisting of the CRT with l/D = 1.0 and TT with y/W= 3. The correlations of the Nusselt number, friction factor and thermal performance factor of the tubes with combined devices are also developed in terms of Reynolds number, Prandtl number, twist ratio and pitch ratio.

The study of key design parameters effects on the vortex tube performance

In this paper, energy separation effect in a vortex tube has been investigated using a CFD model. Thenumerical simulation has been done due to the complex structure of flow. The governing equationshave been solved by FLUENT code in 2D and 3D compressible and turbulent model. The effects ofgeometrical and thermo-physical parameters have been investigated. The results have shown that theoptimum length to diameter ratio is from 25 to 35. Increasing the number of nozzles from 2 to 4 withconvergent shape is found to be an efficient configuration for the swirl generator. The optimum valueof orifice diameter to tube diameter ratio, for the maximum cold air temperature difference and efficiency,has been determined to be around 0.58. The results show that if the inlet pressure increases upto a critical value, the efficiency will increase. Nevertheless, if it increases to higher values, the efficiencywill decrease. Moreover, it is found out that increasing the cold fraction decreases the coldtemperature difference and efficiency.