Pool boiling heat transfer of tandem tubes provided with the novel microstructures

The paper presents experimental data on pool boiling heat transfer of tandem tubes, arranged one above the other in the same vertical plane. The outer surface of the tubes is provided with the novel microstructures. The structure elements are micropins created by electrolytic deposition of copper upon the tube, using a specially treated polycarbonate foil. By this technique the pins diameter can be varied from 0.1 μm up to 25 μm, the pins height goes up to 100 μm at densities up to 1 × 10⁹ pins/cm² and pins inclination almost up to 180° regarding the base surface. Micropins with several different inclinations can be created simultaneously on the same surface.Experiments were conducted with two different microstructures using the refrigerant R134a and the highly wetting Fluorinert liquid FC-3284 at pressures of 5-9 bar and 0.5-1.5 bar, respectively. The advantages of the novel microstructure regarding the boiling heat transfer for tandem tubes turned out to be practically the same as for a single tube arrangement. Microstructured tubes have the superheat independent on the heat flux, they show a very low boiling inception superheats (below 2 K), are highly effective in comparison with a technically smooth tubes, and operate stable over the long periods of time.     

Large eddy simulation of cross-flow through a staggered tube bundle at subcritical Reynolds number

The Large Eddy Simulation (LES) technique is used to study the vortex shedding characteristics inside a staggered tube array consisting of six rows with intermediate spacings (S_L/D×S_T/D=1.6×3.6) at the subcritical Reynolds number of 8600 (based on the gap velocity). The filtered equations are discretised using the finite volume method in an unstructured, collocated grid arrangement with second-order accurate methods in space and time. The predictions of mean velocities and Reynolds stresses are in very good agreement with detailed LDA measurements performed in 17 stations along the depth of the array. The sizes of the recirculation zones behind the cylinders in the first and third row also compare favourably with available correlations. Two distinct and independent shedding frequencies are detected behind the first two rows, but the high-frequency component vanishes in the downstream rows. The corresponding Strouhal numbers agree well with measurements available in the literature for similar tube spacings. The lift coefficient as well as instantaneous flow patterns of the whole array are also examined.     

Two-phase flow in inclined tubes with specific reference to condensation: A review

Tilting influences the flow patterns and thus the heat transfer and pressure drop during condensation in smooth tubes. However, few studies are available on diabatic two-phase flows in inclined tubes. The purpose of the present paper is to review two-phase flow in inclined tubes, with specific reference to condensation. Firstly, the paper reviews convective condensation in horizontal tubes. Secondly, an overview is given of two-phase flow in inclined tubes. Thirdly, a review is conducted on condensation in inclined tubes. It is shown for convective condensation in inclined tubes that the inclination angle influences the heat transfer coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient can be increased or decreased depending on the experimental conditions, and especially the flow pattern. Under certain conditions, an inclination angle may exist, which leads to an optimum heat transfer coefficient. Furthermore, this paper highlights the lack of experimental studies for the prediction of the inclination angle effect on the flow pattern, the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop in two-phase flows during phase change.     

Heat transfer characteristics and Nusselt number correlation of turbulent pulsating pipe air flows

Heat transfer characteristics to turbulent pulsating pipe flows under a wide range of Reynolds number and pulsation frequency were experimentally investigated under uniform heat flux condition. Reynolds number was varied from 8462 to 48540 while the frequency of pulsation ranged from 1 to 29.5 Hz. The results showed that the relative mean Nusselt number is strongly affected by both pulsation frequency and Reynolds number. Enhancements in mean Nusselt number of up to 50% were obtained at medium pulsation frequency between 4.1 and 13.9 Hz for Reynolds number range of 8462 to 14581. An enhancement of up to 50% in mean Nusselt number was obtained at high pulsation frequency range between 13.9 and 29.5 Hz, specially as Reynolds number is close to 15000, while a reduction was observed at higher Reynolds number more than 21200. This reduction, at high Reynolds number, increased as pulsation frequency increased. Also, there was a reduction in mean Nusselt number of up to 20% that obtained at low pulsation frequency range between 1 and 4.1 Hz for Reynolds number range of 8462 to 48543. A significant reduction in mean Nusselt number of up to 40% was obtained at medium pulsation frequency between 4.1 and 13.9 Hz for Reynolds number range of 21208 to 48543. Empirical equations have been developed for the relative mean Nusselt number that related to Reynolds number and dimensionless frequency with about uncertainty of 10% rms.The support of both King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and Cairo University for this research is acknowledged.     

An experimental investigation of heat transfer to pulsating pipe air flow with different amplitudes

Heat transfer characteristics to both laminar and turbulent pulsating pipe flows under different conditions of Reynolds number, pulsation frequency, pulsator location and tube diameter were experimentally investigated. The tube wall of uniform heat flux condition was considered for both cases. Reynolds number varied from 750 to 12,320 while the frequency of pulsation ranged from 1 to 10 Hz. With locating the pulsator upstream of the inlet of the test section tube, results showed an increase in heat transfer rate due to pulsation by as much as 30% with flow Reynolds number of 1,643 and pulsation frequency of 1 Hz, depending on the upstream location of the pulsator valve. Closer the valve to the tested section inlet, the better improvement in the heat transfer coefficient is achieved. Upon comparing the heat transfer results of the upstream and the downstream pulsation, at Reynolds number of 1,366 and 1,643, low values of the relative mean Nusselt number were obtained with the upstream pulsation. Comparing the heat transfer results of the two studied test sections tubes for Reynolds number range from 8,000 to 12,000 and pulsation frequency range from 1.0 to 10 Hz showed that more improvement in heat transfer rate was observed with a larger tube diameter. For Reynolds number ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 and pulsation frequency of 10 Hz, an improvement in the relative mean Nusselt number of about 50% was obtained at Reynolds number of 8,000 for the large test section diameter of 50 mm. While, for the small test section diameter of 15 mm, at same conditions of Reynolds number and frequency, a reduction in the relative mean Nusselt number of up to 10% was obtained.     

Pressure drop, heat transfer and performance of single-phase turbulent flow in spirally corrugated tubes

The paper presents the results of an experimental study that was carried out to determine turbulent friction and heat transfer characteristics of four spirally corrugated tubes, which have various geometrical parameters, with water and oil as the working fluids. Experiments were performed under conditions of Reynolds number varying from 6000 to 93,000 for water, and from 3200 to 19,000 for oil, respectively. The results show that the thermal performance of these tubes was superior compared to a smooth tube, but the heat transfer enhancements were not as large as the friction factor increases. Friction factors and heat transfer coefficient in these rough tubes were analyzed on the basis of momentum and heat transfer analogy, and the correlations obtained were compared with the present data and also the results of previous investigators. A mathematical model to evaluate the performance of spirally corrugated tube, which takes account of the large variation of fluid Prandtl number with temperature, was developed by the extension of previous work of Bergles and Webb. The results reported enable practical designs with standard products and optimization of tube geometry for specific conditions.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of turbulent cross-flow in a staggered tube bundle

This paper presents the results of measurements and numerical predictions of turbulent cross-flow in a staggered tube bundle. The bundle consists of transverse and longitudinal pitch-to-diameter ratios of 3.8 and 2.1, respectively. The experiments were conducted using a particle image velocimetry technique, in a flow of water in a channel at a Reynolds number of 9300 based on the inlet velocity and the tube diameter. A commercial CFD code, ANSYS CFX V10.0, is used to predict the turbulent flow in the bundle. The steady and isothermal Reynolds–Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations were used to predict the turbulent flow using each of the following four turbulence models: a k-epsilon, a standard k-omega, a k-omega-based shear stress transport, and an epsilon-based second moment closure. The epsilon-based models used a scalable wall function and the omega-based models used a wall treatment that switches automatically between low-Reynolds and standard wall function formulations.

The experimental results revealed extremely high levels of turbulence production by the normal stresses, as well as regions of negative turbulence production. The convective transport by mean flow and turbulent diffusion were observed to be significantly higher than in classical turbulent boundary layers. As a result, turbulence production is generally not in equilibrium with its dissipation rate. In spite of these characteristics, it was observed that the Reynolds normal stresses approximated from the k-based two-equation models were in a closer agreement with experiments than values obtained from the second moment closure. The results show that none of the turbulence models was able to consistently reproduce the mean and turbulent quantities reasonably well. The omega-based models predicted the mean velocities better in the developing region while the epsilon-based models gave better results in the region where the flow is becoming spatially periodic.     

The effect of slip distribution on flow past a circular cylinder

A slip boundary has been shown to have a significant impact on flow past bluff bodies. In this work and using a circular cylinder as a model system, the effects of various slip configurations on the passing flow are investigated. A theoretical analysis using matched-asymptotic expansion is first performed in the small-Reynolds number regime following Stokes and Oseen. A slip boundary condition is shown to lead to only higher-order effects (~1/ln(Re)) on the resulting drag coefficient. For higher Reynolds numbers (100–500), the effects of five types of symmetric slip boundary conditions, namely, no slip, fore-side slip, aft-side slip, flank slip, and all slip on the flow field and pertinent parameters are investigated with numerical simulations. Detailed results on the flow structure and force distribution are presented. Flank slip is found to have the best effect for drag reduction with comparable coverage of slip area. For asymmetric slip distributions, torque and lift are found to generally occur.     

Boiling heat transfer enhancement of water on tubes in compact in-line bundles

In desalinization devices and some heat exchangers making use of low-quality heat energy, both wall temperatures and wall heat fluxes of the heated tubes are generally quite low; hence they cannot cause boiling in flooded tube-bundle evaporators with common large tube spacing. However, when the tube spacing is very small, the incipient boiling in restricted spaces can generate and results in higher heat transfer than that of pool boiling at the same heat flux. This study investigated experimentally the effects of tube spacing, positions of tubes and test pressures on the boiling heat transfer of water in restricted spaces of the compact in-line bundles consisting of smooth horizontal tubes. The experimental results show that tube spacing and tube position have significant effects on the boiling heat transfer in a compact tube bundle. There is an optimum tube spacing that provides the largest heat transfer coefficient at the same heat flux.     

Drag force on a free surface-piercing yawed circular cylinder in steady flow

The force distribution on a surface-piercing yawed cylinder surface differs significantly from that on a surface-piercing vertical cylinder. The established numerical model for flow past the surface-piercing yawed cylinder with yaw angles from −45° to 45° was solved by the standard large-eddy simulation (LES) methodology. Six cases at intervals of ±15° relative to the vertical were studied at the Reynolds number of 27 000 and the Froude number of 0.8 based on the cylinder diameter and free-stream velocity, among which the drag forces on four cylinders with yaw angles from −15° to 30° were tested for the validation of the LES approach. The results revealed that the time-averaged total drag coefficient for all cases increases with the increase of yaw angle compared to that of the surface-piercing vertical cylinder, even over 2.5 for the ±45°-yawed cylinders. The sectional drag coefficients for the negatively yawed cylinders are much greater than that for the vertical cylinder, and much less for the positively yawed cylinders. The unbalanced hydrostatic pressures on the inclined section are mainly responsible for those increment and decrement. Once the hydrostatic pressure was removed, the sectional drag coefficient on the mid-span of the positively yawed cylinder increases from the top section to the bottom, and decreases for the negatively yawed cylinder. The corresponding integrated total drag coefficient decreases with the increase of the yaw angle to ±15°, then increases with the further increase of the magnitude of yaw angle.     

Friction and heat transfer in drag-reducing surfactant solution flow through curved pipes and elbows

A study of drag-reducing flow in curved pipes was conducted. In contrast to earlier studies we show that if we use a modified definition of drag reduction that includes only the turbulence effects, we observe indeed the same level of drag reduction in both coiled and straight pipes. More complex results showing reduced drag reduction compared to curved pipes were achieved with elbows. Two elbows of different size and type were tested in turbulent flow of both water and drag-reducing surfactant solution. A more elaborate analysis was conducted for a half-inch threaded elbow with a ratio of curvature radius to diameter of 1.2. The pressure drop and heat transfer were measured in a section downstream from the elbow over a distance of x/D = 130 in order to investigate the hydrodynamic and thermal developments of the flow. The pressure drop coefficient of the elbow was calculated for water and a surfactant solution, based on the total increase in pressure drop in the system due to the presence of the elbow. For a larger welded elbow of 6″ diameter some drag reduction was measured for the surfactant solution.     

Heat transfer and skin-friction in a turbulent boundary layer under a non-equilibrium longitudinal adverse pressure gradient

The experimental data on the effect of weak and moderate non-equilibrium adverse pressure gradients (APG) on the parameters of dynamic and thermal boundary layers are presented. The Reynolds number based on the momentum thickness at the beginning of the APG region was Re^** = 5500. The APG region was a slot channel with upper wall expansion angles from 0 to 14°. The profiles of the mean and fluctuation velocity components were measured using a single-component hot-wire anemometer. The friction coefficients were determined using two methods, namely, the indirect Clauser method and the direct method of weighting the lower wall region on a single-component strain-gage balance. The heat transfer coefficients were determined by a transient method using an IR camera. It is noticed that in the pressure gradient range realized the universal logarithmic region in the boundary layer profile is conserved. The values of the relative (divided by the parameters in zero gradient flow at the same value of Re^**) friction and heat transfer coefficients, together with the Reynolds analogy factor, are determined as functions of the longitudinal pressure gradient. The values of the relative friction coefficient reduced to c_f/c_f0 = 0.7 and those of the heat transfer to St/St₀ = 0.9. A maximum value of the Reynolds analogy factor (St/St₀)/(c_f/c_f0) = 1.16 was reached for the pressure gradient parameter β = 2.9.     

Comparison of the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical pressure water to that of subcritical pressure water in vertically-upward tubes

A systematic comparison was made between the forced convection heat transfer characteristics of the supercritical pressure water and that of the subcritical pressure water in vertically-upward tubes. It was found that, severe heat transfer deterioration did not occur in the vertically-upward internally-ribbed tube at supercritical pressures, and the variations in the inside wall temperature with the bulk fluid enthalpy experienced three stages, namely, the continuously increasing stage, the smoothly changing stage and another continuously increasing stage at the supercritical pressures; however, at subcritical pressures, there existed at least four stages for the variation of the inside tube wall temperature, i.e., the continuously increasing stage, the basically unchanging stage, the sharply rising stage and another continuously increasing stage. The heat transfer coefficients in the subcritical two-phase region, in which the heat transfer deterioration did not occur, were much greater than those in the heat transfer enhancement region of supercritical pressure water. In the large specific heat region of supercritical pressure water, the enhanced heat transfer was impaired by increasing the heat flux; however, in the subcritical two-phase region, the higher the heat flux, the greater the heat transfer coefficient would be. It was also found that the heat transfer deterioration of supercritical pressure water was similar in mechanism to the DNB (departure from nucleate boiling) at subcritical pressures.     

Heat transfer to air–water annular flow in a horizontal pipe

Two-phase air–water flow and heat transfer in a 25 mm internal diameter horizontal pipe were investigated experimentally. The water superficial velocity varied from 24.2 m/s to 41.5 m/s and the air superficial velocity varied from 0.02 m/s to 0.09 m/s. The aim of the study was to determine the heat transfer coefficient and its connection to flow pattern and liquid film thickness. The flow patterns were visualized using a high speed video camera, and the film thickness was measured by the conductive tomography technique. The heat transfer coefficient was calculated from the temperature measurements using the infrared thermography method. It was found that the heat transfer coefficient at the bottom of the pipe is up to three times higher than that at the top, and becomes more uniform around the pipe for higher air flow-rates. Correlations on local and average Nusselt number were obtained and compared to results reported in the literature. The behavior of local heat transfer coefficient was analyzed and the role of film thickness and flow pattern was clarified.     

Flow and heat transfer performance of a mini-channel radiator with cylinder disturbed flow

Mini-channel heat sinks have relatively low Nusselt number due to small Reynolds number. For heat transfer enhancement purpose, a mini-channel radiator with cylinder disturbed flow was proposed. The disturbed flow was created by a circular cylinder placed horizontally in front of channels entrance. The performance of heat transfer and pressure drop with/without disturbed flow was studied experimentally. It was found that the friction factor of mini-channel flow was larger than that of the macro-channel flow due to larger surface roughness, and the pressure drop caused by cylinder disturbed flow was less than 5%. It also concluded that the average Nusselt number increases with augment of Reynolds and Prandtl number. The Nusselt number correlations as the function of the Reynolds and Prandtl number were given for evaluation the heat removal performance of similar heat radiators. There is an inflexion point in the empirical formulas when the channel length equals to the thermal entrance length. For the mini-channels heat radiators with disturbed flow, the inflexion Reynolds number is larger than that of without disturbed flow. Due to the flow pulsing caused by circular cylinder placed in front of channels entrance, the thermal entrance length increases. On the other hand, for both mini-channels with or without disturbed flow, the thermal resistance increases with the decrease of pressure drop.     

Heat transfer analysis according to condensation flow structures in a minichannel

An experimental investigation of complete condensation flow is undertaken for a range of mass flow rates between 3.4 and 13.8 kg/m² s. The associated flow regimes are visualized using an ombroscopic technique. Two major flows are observed (with or without release of bubbles). A critical value of the mass flow rate is obtained at the transition between these two regimes. The visualization also enables a local parameter to be determined: the void fraction. The influence of the presence of a bubbly zone is highlighted by the heat transfer and pressure drops. Finally, the dependence of the critical value of the mass flow rate on the temperature of the secondary flow is obtained.     

Breakup and atomization characteristics of mono-dispersed diesel droplets in a cross-flow air stream

This paper describes the microscopic and macroscopic breakup characteristics, as well as the velocity and size distributions, of mono-dispersed droplets in relation to the breakup regimes. For this experiment, a droplet generator equipped with a piezo stack produced mono-dispersed droplets. The droplet-breakup phenomenon due to the cross-flow was captured in microscopic and macroscopic views by using the following: a spark lamp, a Nd:YAG laser, a long distance microscope and a CCD camera as a function of the Weber number. Along with the analysis of the images, the droplet size and velocity distributions were measured in the near nozzle region by a phase Doppler particle analyzer system at bag, stretching and thinning, and catastrophic breakup regimes. The results of this study showed the size and velocity distributions of disintegrated droplets at the bag, stretching and thinning, and catastrophic breakup regimes. In the bag breakup regime, the droplets separated into small and large droplets during breakup. Alternatively, the droplets disintegrated at a shorter duration and formed a cloud, similar to a fuel spray injected through an injector, in the stretching and thinning and catastrophic breakup regimes.     

Influence of the mass ratio on the fluidelastic instability of a flexible cylinder in a bundle of rigid tubes

Several linear lumped-parameter models were proposed in the past to identify the main mechanisms underlying the cross-flow instability of a single flexible cylinder in tube bundles. Basing on such models, we analyze the influence of the mass ratio when the cylinder vibrates in the transverse direction, without structural damping (corresponding to a zero Scruton number). For two selected mass ratios, we focus on this linear interaction plotting the poles of the fluid–structure system as a function of the reduced velocity (root locus). This asymptotic approach allows a better understanding of the combined influence of the transient fluidelastic coupling and the mass ratio.