Forced convection and friction in triangular duct with uniformly spaced square ribs on inner surfaces

Experimental investigation had been conducted to study the steady-state forced convection heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of the hydrodynamic fully-developed turbulent flow in the air-cooled horizontal equilateral triangular ducts, which were fabricated with the same length and hydraulic diameter. Inner surfaces of the ducts were fixed with square ribs with different side lengths of 6.35, 9.525 and 12.7 mm, respectively, and the uniform separation between the centre lines of two adjacent ribs was kept constant at 57.15 mm. Both the triangular ducts and the ribs were fabricated with duralumin. The experiments were performed with the hydraulic diameter based Reynolds number ranged from 3100 to 11300. The entire inner wall of the duct was heated uniformly, while the outer surface was thermally insulated. It was found that the Darcy friction factor of the duct was increasing rather linearly with the rib size, and forced convection could be enhanced by an internally ribbed surface. However, the heat transfer enhancement was not proportional to the rib size but a maximum forced convection heat transfer augmentation was obtained at the smallest rib of 6.35 mm. Non-dimensional expressions for the determination of the steady-state heat transfer coefficient and Darcy friction factor of the equilateral triangular ducts, which were internally fabricated with uniformly spaced square ribs of different sizes, were also developed. Received on 25 May 1999