Experimental and numerical exploration on improved heat transfer by continuous spiral flow in shell of spiral wound corrugated tube heat exchanger

Abstract

A novel approach to heat exchangers is suggested, featuring a continuous spiral baffle structure in spiral wound corrugated tubes. In this study, an exploration of the flow field and thermal transfer characteristics within the shell pass was conducted via both experimental and numerical simulation procedures. Discoveries indicate that increasing the entry speed on the shell pass results in a drop in fluid temperature, shrinkage of the low-temperature segment, and escalated resistance within the heat exchanger. At the same time, we investigated the corrugated height and pitch and their impact on comprehensive thermal transfer performance Under the same operating conditions, with an increase in the corrugated height H or a decrease in the corrugated pitch P, compared to the continuous spiral wound circular tubes tube heat exchangers, the friction coefficient (f) increases by 15%–55%, the Nusselt number (Nu) of the continuous spiral wound corrugated tubes heat exchangers increases by 10%–40%. The overall heat transfer performance improves by 7%–21%.