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Effect of using various longitudinal fin number in annular finned channel heat

exchangers on Heat flow characteristics

Article · January 2019

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 Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10

Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid

Penerbit
Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Akademia Baru
Journal homepage: www.akademiabaru.com/arfmts.html
ISSN: 2289-7879

Effect Of Using Various Longitudinal Fin Number In Finned Open

Channel Heat Exchangers On Heat Flow Characteristics Access

Wadhah Hussein Abdulrazzaq Al Doori1,*

1
Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Tikrit University, Iraq

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history: This paper presents the air-side overall heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop
Received 5 August 2018 characteristics for finned channel with various longitudinal fins number. The
Received in revised form 28 September 2018 computational fluid dynamics analysis with ANSYS Fluent software was applied for
Accepted 5 October 2018 the analysis of the heat transfer. Numerical simulation was performed for the
Available online 8 January 2019
different longitudinal fins number of (4, 8 and 12), at air flow speeds of 3 m/s to 7
m/s and validated with available correlations. The numerical simulations results, with
respect to the pressure drop and exchanged heat were verified by the correlations
available in the literature and compared to the simulation results for plain channel.
The results indicated that maximum enhancement in Nusselt number of 265%, 221%
and 153% credited to the finned channel with 12, 8, and 4 fins respectively.
Moreover, the increase in fins number led to significant improvement for both
Nusselt number and Euler number. The results showed good agreement with the
existing correlations with a maximum deviation of 10% and 12% for Nusselt number
and Euler number respectively for all case.
Keywords:
Longitudinal finned-channel, Fins
number, Heat transfer, Pressure drop Copyright © 2019 PENERBIT AKADEMIA BARU - All rights reserved

1. Introduction

The finned tube heat exchangers are widely used in different industrial sectors. In heat
exchanger design, it is essential to consider the interactions between the flow distribution as well
as the heat transfer within the fins. The principle of using fins in heat exchangers is to enhance the
thermal performance [1-4]. Several investigations have been conducted to study the effect of
utilizing longitudinal fins in heat exchangers [5-9]. Some of these investigations stated that the
boundary layers developments affected by fin spacing. [10-13]. A research by Jameson [14]
revealed that the fin spacing considered very effective parameter on the heat transfer coefficient
with remarkable effect on pressure drop.
A numerical simulation was achieved for the needle fins and round fins in finned heat
exchangers. Results show that the usage of needle fins led to enhance Nusselt number up to 30 %
for the considered turbulent Reynolds number with minimizing the mass of heat exchange surfaces

*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (Wadhah Hussein Abdulrazzaq Al Doori)

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

of 23,8 % [15]. Another study was conducted by Zhukauskas [16], of three flow regimes such as
laminar, turbulent and separated flow in finned tube heat exchanger, moreover, correlations have
been predicted for friction factor and Nusselt number for finned tube heat exchanger. According to
the literature review, most of the investigations on finned tube heat exchanger are limited to
experiments, furthermore, Jang et al., [17] conducted the first numerical study of the annular
finned tube.
Nevertheless, the effect of using various extended surfaces configuration such as longitudinal
and triangular fins in latent heat thermal energy storage system were numerically conducted. The
finding revealed that the utilizing of external triangular fins provides higher enhancement about
18% comparing with longitudinal fins configuration.[18]. Additional numerical study has been
conducted using longitudinal finned heat pipe in latent thermal energy storage system. The results
indicate that thinner fins reduce the system cost, with take in consideration the limitation of the fin
thickness to be welded on a heat pipe economically [19].
However, according to the published academic reports, the few of the conducted studies were
discussed the influence of utilizing the longitudinal fins in heat exchangers. Therefore, the purpose
of this study is to investigate the effect of using longitudinal fins with annular finned channel heat
exchanger with various fins number on the heat transfer and flow characteristic under turbulent
flow regime.

2. Numerical Approach

The proposed geometries of annular-longitudinal finned channel heat exchangers are shown in
Figure 1. Furthermore, the geometrical dimensions of the studied models are presented in Table 1
and Figure 2 where the fin spacing accounted as the distance between two fin bases tangentially to
the channel surface.

(a) Case 1 (b) Case 2

(c) Case 3 (d) Case 4

Fig. 1. Annular finned channel with longitudinal fins

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

Fig. 2. Geometrical description of

Longitudinal finned channel

Table 1
Geometrical dimensions of the studied models
Parameters Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4
Channel length 60 60 60 60
Square channel rib, a 20 20 20 20
Number of fins, n 0 4 8 12
Fin height, hf 0 15 15 15
Fin thickness, tf 0 1 1 1
Fin base spacing, S 0 19 9 5.66
Fin pitch, Sf=S+ tf 0 20 10 6.66

2.1 Governing Equations

For the proposed geometrical shape of the annular finned channel heat exchanger with a
considered range of Reynolds number of (2,500, 5,000 and 10,000), the three dimensional,
unsteady, incompressible and turbulent flow have been assumed to formulate the governing
equations of continuity, momentum, and energy equations as following [20]
Continuity equation

0 (1)

Momentum equation:

(2)

where

! " (3)

The transport Eqs. 4 and 5 have been employed using RNG k-ε turbulent model in this numerical
investigation.

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

# #
$% &'' ( ) * (4)

+ + + +/
$% &'' ( ,-. # ) , . #
0 (5)

12 3 4 -536 + /
0 -7834 #
(6)

Meanwhile, µt is turbulent viscosity and Cµ=0.0845.

#/
× ,: × (7)
+

The (C1ε =1.42 and C2ε =1.68) are model constants and derived analytically by the RNG theory
[20]. Additionally, ß=0.012, η= Sk/ε , and η0= 4.38, while, S is strain rate magnitude.
Energy equation

=
; ; < !&'' " (8)

where: E is total energy, while Keff is effective conductivity represented with

keff =k+kt

The equation of the energy transport has been applied within the fins (solid region) and defined
as in Eq. 9 with neglect the radiation effects and the buoyancy.

=
> ? !@ " (9)

2.2 Boundary Conditions and Grid Independence

The numerical simulation has been carried out for four different geometries of finned square
channels varies with fins number of (4, 8 and 12 mm) under turbulent flow regime with uniform
velocity and temperature (Tin=300 K). The heat conduction in the fin body and heat convection
from the fin to the surrounding are considered. Meanwhile, at the inner channel wall, a constant
temperature (Tw =373 K) is assigned and all components of the velocity are set to be zero.
Furthermore, grid independent study has been approved with a various number of grid
elements as shown in Table 2. The relative errors in the pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient
between proposed mesh grids should be less than 5% as reported by [21]. Nevertheless, the
applicable element number 1,200,187 cells are utilized to formulate the mesh of the computational
domains. The finite volume method with (RNG) renormalization group theory-based K-ε turbulent
model is applied to estimate the heat transfer and flow characteristics.

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

Table 2
Grid independence
Number of Elements h, h, h, ΔP, ΔP, ΔP,
Case-2 Case-3 Case-4 Case-2 Case-3 Case-4
34,562 150.85 166.48 195.16 1584.37 1630.72 2083.67
103,689 134.59 150.91 183.91 1476.04 1481.04 1903.28
362,883 120. 41 147.53 178.47 1383.92 1320.83 1852.71
1,200,187 112.83 136.47 174.29 1243.76 1265.61 1815.33
1,552,460 111.74 135.92 173.84 1239.85 1264.93 1814.87
1,705,112 111.68 135.87 173.72 1239.85 1264.88 1814.75

2.3 Data Reduction

The rate of heat transfer of the heat exchanger is estimated for the air-side based on Eq. 10
where the (Hin) and (Hout) refer to the rates of the enthalpy flow of the computational domain inlet
and outlet section respectively.

AB CBD CB E (10)

Then the heat transfer coefficient (h) is estimated using Eq. 11 where the η is the fin efficiency,
Af is the area of fin surface and At is area of tube surface without fin.

GB
ℎ (11)
HIJ 73IK LM

where Ɵ is the (LMTD) log mean temperature difference,

= O 5=6PJ
N R O SRT (12)
QE
R6PJ SRT

VWXY ѱ\]K
U (13)
ѱ\]K

where

] ]K
^ _# ,ѱ 1.0 0.35de 1.0 2.0 "
K K g

Additionally, Nusselt number and Euler number are estimated based on Eqs. 14 and 15
respectively.

]g
h (14)
#i

jk
; / (15)
lim

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

3. Numerical Results Validation

In order to validate and evaluate the current numerical results of the pressure drop represented
with Euler number and heat transfer represented with Nusselt number, comparison with the
available correlations in the literature has been achieved. Figure 3.a presents a comparison of the
Nusselt number with Schmidt correlations of [22] Eq. 16 and VDI [23] Eq. 17.
It can be observed that the Nusselt number for all fins number increased with increasing the
fins number and Reynolds number. Furthermore, the results show good agreement with the
correlations with maximum deviations of 10%.

u
I 5p. vr
h 0.450o p.q r st 4 " (16)
IJ

u
I 5p.-r
h 0.380o p.q st 4 " (17)
IJ

Figure 3(b) shows the validation of the Euler number results of the finned channel with four fins
versus the correlation of Robinson and Briggs [24] Eq. 18, where the pressure drop is represented
by Euler number. It is observed from the comparison of the presented results and the obtained
results from Robinson and Briggs [24] that the Euler number increased with decrease Reynolds
number and increase fins number. Nevertheless, the result shows that the maximum deviation is
12 % although the absence of the finning geometrical variables, for instance, the fins number, fin
thickness, height, and spacing.

5p.z v
-q yJ
; 18.930o 5p. " e (18)
g

(a) Nusselt number (b) Euler number

Fig. 3. The present results versus available correlations

4. Results and Discussion

4.1 The Visualization Results of Temperature Distribution and Flow Behaviour

With the intention to describe the behaviour of temperature distribution and clarify the heat
transfer phenomena, its necessary to present the contour of temperature distribution as shown in
Figure 4, for four cases such as plain channel, finned channel with four fins, eight fins and twelve
fins under turbulent flow regime with Re=5,000. Figure 4(a) illustrated the temperature distribution
over the plain channel, it obviously observed the weakness of temperature distribution and

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

propagation. This can be attributed to the small contacted surface area of the channel with
surrounding flow. Furthermore, Figure 4(b), 4(c), and 4(d) illustrate the temperature distribution
over the finned channel with different fins number 4, 8, and 12 respectively. It can obviously
observe the significant incremental in temperature distribution over fins surfaces especially
between the fins and this clearly shown in Figure 4(b) and 4(c). The finding reveal that the heat
transfer increased and enhanced with increase fins number due to increase surface contact area.
Figure 5, shows the velocity contour for finned channels with different fins number to clarify the
effect of fins number on the stream flow. Figure 5(a) displays the velocity contour over plain
channel, while figures 5(b), (c), and (d) display the contours of finned channel with various fins
number of (4, 8 and 12) respectively. It is clearly observed the effect of fins number on the flow
intributions over the finned channel surfaces and increase the fluctuations near fins wall where
with increase the fins number the contact surface increase as well and this lead to increase the
turbulent intensity and reducing the boundary layers the enhancing the heat transfer.

(a) Plain channel (b) Finned channel with 4-fins

(c) Finned channel with 8-fins (d) Finned channel with 12-fins
Fig. 4. Temperature distribution contour at Re=5,000

(a) Plain channel (b) Finned channel with 4-fins

(c) Finned channel with 8-fins (d) Finned channel with 12-fins
Fig. 5. Velocity contour at Re=5,000

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

4.2 Effect of Fins Number on Heat Transfer and Flow Characteristics

The effect of fins number on heat transfer is shown in Figure 6. The numerical results of Nusselt
number versus Reynolds number are illustrated in Figure 6(a), the results confirm that the increase
in stream velocity represented by Reynolds number lead to enhance Nusselt number significantly as
well as the increase in fins number provides higher enhancement in Nusselt number. Moreover,
Figure 6.b. show the Nusselt number ratio against Reynolds number with different fins number. The
results confirm the significant effect of increasing fins number, where the maximum heat transfer
enhancement represented by Nusselt number enhancement assigned to the finned channel with
twelve fins followed by eight and four fins.
Similarly, Figure 7, displays the Euler number results against Reynolds number with different
fins number and compared with the plain channel as shown in Figure 7(a) the result indicate that
the Euler number increased with increase fins number and decreased with increasing Reynolds
number. Meanwhile, Figure 7(b), presents the Euler number enhancement ratio against Reynolds
number. The results demonstrate a significant enhancement of Euler number for the finned
channel with twelve longitudinal fins followed by eight, and four fins. Therefore, the increase in
fins number led to significant improvement for both Nusselt number and Euler number.

(a) Nusselt number results (b) Nusselt number enhancement

Fig. 6. Numerical Nusselt number results versus Reynolds number

(a) Euler number results (b) Euler number enhancement

Fig. 7. Numerical Euler number results versus Reynolds number

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Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences
Volume 53, Issue 1 (2019) 1-10 Akademia Baru

5. Conclusion

The numerical investigation on heat exchangers with an annular-finned channel successfully

achieved with different fins number to investigate the pressure drop and the heat transfer
characteristics. The results show significant incremental in temperature distribution over fins
surfaces especially between the fins, the finding reveal that the heat transfer increased and
enhanced with increase fins number due to increase surface contact area. Moreover, the increase
in stream velocity represented by Reynolds number lead to enhance Nusselt number significantly as
well as the increase in fins number provide higher enhancement in Nusselt number, where the
maximum heat transfer enhancement represented by Nusselt number enhancement assigned to
the finned channel with twelve fins followed by eight and four fins. Nevertheless, the results
demonstrate a significant enhancement of Euler number for finned channel with twelve
longitudinal fins followed by eight, and four fins. Therefore, the increase in fins number led to
significant improvement for both Nusselt number and Euler number. A good agreement was
observed in the comparison of the current finding and the existing correlations with a maximum
deviation of 10% and 12% for Nusselt number and Euler number respectively for all case.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Tikrit University for providing laboratory facilities and financial
support.

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