A case study on effect of twisting technique on heat transfer characteristics in a twisted oval helical tube

Abstract

Efficient transfer of energy is an important issue addressed by numerous scholars in the literature and various methods have been proposed for enhancing the heat transfer efficiency in heat exchangers. Among many different heat exchangers, helical tubes are one of the most prevalent types of heat exchangers which have many applications in industry. In a case study, effect of twisting technique on the heat transfer in a helical tube with oval cross section has been investigated numerically and the results have been compared with simple circular cross section helical tube. Effect of cross section aspect ratio and twisting ratio in different flow Reynolds numbers has been considered. Results have been presented in terms of Nusselt number, friction factor, PEC, entropy generation and contours of velocity, streamlines and temperature. Results indicate that twisting technique can significantly enhance the heat transfer and all cases have PEC values of above unit which indicates superiority of this method. Also the velocity contours and streamlines indicate that using twisting technique result in higher mixing in the flow which is the reason for higher heat transfer characteristics in twisted oval helical tubes.

Keywords Elliptical cross section, Entropy generation, Heat exchanger, Oval helical tube, Twisting technique