Estimation of local heat flux for turbulent flow in a helical coil tube by conjugate gradient method

Abstract

Estimation of local heat flux is challenging in a helical coil tube heat exchanger due to the complex flow field developed by tube curvature. The heat flux has uneven distribution in the angular direction of the tube cross-section. The current research aims to estimate the local heat flux at the fluid-solid interface for the turbulent flow of water in a helical coil tube by solving the inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP). Conjugate gradient method (CGM) with an adjoint problem is used as an inverse algorithm. First, the commercial CFD software ANSYS FLUENT is used for solving the governing equations of continuity, momentum, and energy for turbulent flow to obtain the heat flux at the fluid-solid interface. This heat flux is used to determine the temperature distribution at the outer surface of the tube. The heat flux is then considered unknown and it is estimated by CGM algorithm with the developed in-house code in MATLAB. The result shows that the estimation of heat flux by CGM is very accurate.