Performance characteristics of a chilled water spirally coiled finned tube in cross flow for air conditioning applications

Abstract

In the present study, the thermo-fluid characteristics of a spirally coiled finned tube in cross flow were experimentally investigated. This investigation covered different design parameters such as curvature ratio, air velocity, flow direction, fin pitch and flow rate of chilled water on performance characteristics of the spirally coiled finned tube. The purpose was to evaluate this kind of the spirally finned-tube cooling coils with particular reference to bare coiled tube. Six test specimens were designed and manufactured with curvature ratios of 0.027, 0.03, 0.04, tube pitches of 18, 20, 30 mm and fin pitches of (33, 22, 11 mm). Experiments were carried out in a pilot wind tunnel with air Reynolds number ranging from 35,500 to 245,000. Two types of chilled water flow directions entering the spiral coil were tested at Reynolds number ranging from 5700 to 25,300, the first was inward flow direction and the other was to outward flow direction. The results revealed that the inward flow direction has significant enhancement effect on the Nusselt number compared with outward flow direction by 37.0% for tube pitch of 18 mm and curvature ratio of 0.027. The decrease of fin pitch enhances the Nusselt number by 21.92% on expense of friction factor by 10.9%. In the case of spirally coiled bare tube, the decreasing of the curvature ratio increases air side Nusselt number by 33.69% on expense of friction factor by 18.36%. General correlations of Nusselt number and air friction factor for bare and finned spirally coiled tube were correlated based on reported experimental data.