Convective heat transfer and friction factor characteristics of helical strip inserted annuli at turbulent flow

Abstract

Helical baffles, wire coils, and rectangular ribs are used to improve the annular fluid flow turbulence and heat transfer performance. Among the different insert types, loose-fitted helical baffles or strips are of major interest because of their better performance. Tight-fitted helical strips can show better performance in the annular flow because they can act as a fin besides acting as a swirl generator compared to loose-fitted ones. For that reason, a three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study is performed to investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of turbulent flow (4000 ≤ Re ≤ 10000) at annuli with and without tight-fitted helical strip inserts. Annuli with 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8 annuli diameter ratio (ADR) are studied for plain and helical strip inserts with pitch ratios (PRs) of 1, 2, and 3. Result showed that higher heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and friction factor were found for insert-fitted annuli compared to those of plain annuli. HTC increased with increase in Re and ADR and decrease in insert PR. The best performance was for 0.8-ADR insert-fitted annuli: 171%–207% (1 PR), 82%–105% (2 PR), and 56%–75% (3 PR) compared to 0.8-ADR plain annuli. Although HTC increased with increase in ADR, the Nusselt number (Nu) decreased because of the smaller hydraulic diameter. Nu increased with increase in Re but decreased with higher ADR and insert PR. The friction factor increased with decrease in insert PR and ADR and decreased with increase in Re. A figure of merit (FoM) was used to combine the benefit of heat transfer enhancement and the drawback of higher pressure drop. The FoM ranged from 0.9 to 1.3, 0.94 to 1.22, and 0.92 to 1.24 for ADR values of 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8, respectively, for a specific Re range. The heat transfer performance obtained was in the order of 3 PR < 2 PR < 1 PR for insert-fitted annuli, but the FoM followed 1 PR < 2 PR < 3 PR because of a much higher pressure drop for lower PR. This study confirms that inserts improve heat transfer, which is better at lower Re.