Performance enhancement of fin and tube heat exchanger employing curved trapezoidal winglet vortex generator with circular punched holes

Abstract

Vortex generation is a potential passive technology for increasing the heat transfer rate in the air side of fin and tube heat exchangers (FTHEs). This study proposes novel configurations of a curved trapezoidal winglet vortex generator (CTWVG) with and without circular holes to improve heat transfer in FTHEs. As per the literature, the streamlined form of the trapezoidal winglet demonstrates high heat transfer enhancement with low flow loss and pressure drop. But still, different design configurations are possible to augment the heat transfer characteristics of CTWVG further. The current study investigates the novel configurations of CTWVG (i.e., CTWVG without hole, CTWVG with 1 hole, CTWVG with 2 holes, CTWVG with 3 holes and CTWVG with 6 holes). A three-dimensional computational model is utilized to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic efficiency of FTHEs fitted with CTWVGs with or without circular holes for Reynolds numbers ranging from 400 to 2000. A common flow-down configuration of the CTWVG with circular tubes array is used to reduce the wake region. The thermo-hydraulic performance and flow structure of FTHE with four inline circular tube configurations are compared without VG and CTWVG with or without holes. Pressure drop (ΔP), Nusselt number (Nu), friction factor (f), Colburn factor (j), and London area goodness factor (j/f) are used for the thermal-hydraulic performance comparison. Results show that the number of punched holes has an impact on the FTHE performance, which is measured using a dimensionless number as performance evaluation criteria (i.e., (j/jo)/(f/fo)). CTWVGs with circular punched holes significantly increase the FTHE's thermo-hydraulic performance. The results indicate that the flow resistance is reduced in all cases (i.e., VG with no holes, VG with 6 holes, VG with 3 holes, VG with 2 holes, and VG with 1 hole) with a minor decrease in the Nusselt number. The CTWVG with six holes performs better than other CTWVG configurations. At Reynolds numbers 400 and 2000, the Nusselt number for CTWVG with six holes enhanced by 75.25% and 40.10%; pressure drop increased by 107.88% and 125.51%, respectively. On the other hand, friction is reduced by a factor of 8.1% in CTWVG with 6 holes compared to CTWVG without holes. The CTWVG with six holes performs better than other CTWVG configurations reported in the literature [48,54]. HTPF has increased by 30.96% (compared to rectangular winglet [48]) and 27.69% (compared to curved rectangular winglet [54]) with respect to values reported in the literature. The London area goodness factor (LAGF) has been increased by 275% compared to Modi et al. [48].