Assessment of heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics within finned flat tube

• Main Authors: Maki H. Zaidan, Aadel A.R. Alkumait, Thamir K. Ibrahim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018-09-01
• Series: Case Studies in Thermal Engineering
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X18301199

In this paper, the heat transfer and flow characteristic of air over flat finned tube with perforated and non-perforated fin have been carried out numerically. The mesh generation and finite volume analyses have been conducted using Ansys 15 with a RNG k–e turbulent model to estimate heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. The free stream velocity ranging between 3,4,5,6, and 7 m/s have been applied for all cases in the simulation and verified with the available data. A satisfactory agreement was found between the percent results and the references with a maximum deviation of 7% for the finned circular tube with solid fin. The results present a considerable enhancement in Nusselt number with using perforation technique, where the perforation provide 8.5%, 13.6% and 18.4% enhancement using circular, square and triangular perforation respectively. Triangular perforation model offers a considerable finding due to the increment in the Nusselt number comparing to the pressure drop. Keywords: Annular flat finned tube, Perforated fins, Heat transfer, Turbulent flow