Heat transfer and pressure drop comparison of louver- and plain-finned heat exchangers where one fluid passes through flattened tubes

Abstract

Louvered fins constitute a major methodology for heat transfer enhancement. Of critical significance in evaluating the worthiness of such fins is the comparison between the heat transfer and pressure drop for a thus-finned heat exchanger with the baseline case of a counterpart plain-finned heat exchanger. Up to the present, it appears that such comparisons are confined to heat exchangers in which one of the participating fluids passes through circular tubes. In another basic geometry in which louvered fins have been employed, the aforementioned participating fluid passes through flattened tubes which are virtually rectangular in cross section. The focus of the present paper is to obtain results for the latter basic geometry for both louver-fin-based heat exchangers and counterpart plain-fin-based heat exchangers. The results were obtained by means of numerical simulation over a range of Reynolds numbers spanning approximately a factor of five. Over this range, enhancements of the heat transfer rate ranged from factors of approximately 2.2–2.8. Over this same Reynolds number range, the pressure drop increased by factors of 2.3–3.6. This outcome is attributable to the fact that the rate of heat transfer is less sensitive to the velocity than is the pressure drop.