Hydrothermal performance of trapezoidal fin equipped with vortex generator and hole: Investigation of the effect of vortex generator and hole position

Abstract

Today, the issue of increasing heat transfer has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers for the development of a variety of heat exchangers to achieve high efficiency, low cost, lightweight. In this paper, the hydrothermal performance is investigated by incorporating vortex generator and hole and their proper positioning on trapezoidal fin. For this purpose, numerical modeling of water flow in a rectangular channel is performed in two laminar and turbulent flow regimes and for 5 models with different positions of vortex generator and hole in constant size geometric parameters. The results showed that in both flow regimes, the pressure drop was increased by inserting the hole on top and bottom. To create a better comparison, the ratio of the Colburn factor to friction factor was defined and applied in two simple and powerful ways and the best hydraulic-thermal performance was obtained for the trapezoidal fin with the vortex generator on the right and the hole in the middle, so that in the turbulent flow regime, the highest value for the ratio of Colburn factor to friction factor (simple ratio and power ratio) was reported as 0.0539 and 0.01504 for this position, respectively.