Effect of Pitch Ratio of Tube Banks on Passive Acoustic Properties

Abstract

Tube banks are common design elements in heat exchangers. The most common tube bank patterns are In-line tube banks and Staggered tube banks. These are characterized by their longitudinal and transverse pitch ratios (pitches to diameters). The tube bank with a pitch ratio of less than 1.25 is considered a compact tube bank and a pitch ratio greater than 2 is considered as widely spaced. In this paper, the attention is focused on the effects of pitch ratio in tube banks on its passive acoustics properties which are experimentally investigated. The flow duct experimentation is performed with and without flow to analyse the passive acoustic properties of tube banks. The Experiment is conducted for both the In-line and Staggered tube banks with pitch ratios from 1.2 to 2.5. Experimental results consist of scattering matrix coefficients and power balance. The results are compared to see the pitch ratio effect.