Effects of fin pitch and tube diameter on the air-side performance of tube bank fin heat exchanger with the fins punched plane and curved rectangular vortex generators

Abstract

ABSTRACTTube bank fin heat exchangers with vortex generators are widely used in the field of industrial applications. The effects of the fin pitch and the tube diameter on the air-side performance of the tube bank fin heat exchanger with plane rectangular vortex generators (PRVG) and curved rectangular vortex generators (CRVG) are experimentally studied in this paper. Performance comparison is carried out between the fins with PRVG and CRVG. The experimental results show that both PRVG and CRVG can effectively enhance heat transfer performance compared with the plain fin. Both the fin pitch and the tube diameter have obvious effect on f compared with the effect on Nu, especially for the fin with PRVG. The characteristics of Nu, f, and Nu/f1/3 are different for the fins with PRVG and CRVG. The fin with CRVG has a better heat transfer performance than the fin with PRVG for all the cases studied in this paper.