Effects of rib size and arrangement on forced convective heat transfer in a solar air heater channel

Abstract

The article presents an experimental investigation on turbulent heat transfer and friction loss behaviors of airflow through a constant heat-fluxed solar air heater channel fitted with rib turbulators. The experiment was conducted for the airflow rate in terms of Reynolds numbers based on the hydraulic diameter of the channel in a range of 5000–24,000. In the present work, a comparative study between square and thin ribs (90°-rib) with three rib arrangements, namely, one ribbed wall (or single rib), in-line and staggered ribs on two opposite walls was first introduced. The study shows a significant effect of the presence of the ribs on the heat transfer rate and friction loss over the smooth wall channel. The comparison made at a single rib pitch and height also revealed that the thin rib performs better than the corresponding square one. Among the three arrangements, the in-line rib array provides higher heat transfer and friction loss than the staggered and the single one. However, the staggered thin rib provides the highest thermal performance. With this reason, only the staggered thin ribs at four different relative heights (BR = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4) and three relative pitches (PR = 0.5, 0.75 and 1.33) are investigated further. It is found that the staggered rib at BR = 0.4 and PR = 0.5 yields the highest heat transfer and friction factor but the maximum thermal performance is at BR = 0.2 and PR = 0.75.