The interaction between cross-flow induced vibration and convection heat transfer in tube bundle at subcritical Reynolds number

Abstract

This work numerically investigates the interaction between flow-induced vibration (FIV) and forced convection heat transfer in tube bundle with a pitch ratio of 1.5 at subcritical Reynolds number (Re = 5 × 103-3 × 104). The range of reduced velocity is 0.53 ≤ Vr ≤ 2.71. The mass-damping parameter of coupling system is 0.07. The three-dimensional refined FIV simulation considering fluid viscous damping has been validated by the literature experiment to capture three continuous FIV mechanisms, namely turbulence-induced vibration, vortex-induced resonance and fluidelastic instability. The heat transfer and pressure drop in tube bundle are validated by the experiment. The coupling of Navier-Stokes equations, energy equations and vibration equations is solved by under-relaxation algorithm. The results of vibration response, the change of damping for the coupling system, flow field and temperature field, heat transfer and pressure drop are presented and delineated in this paper. The results show that for the low velocity turbulence-induced vibration, the interaction between FIV and flow heat transfer is negligible due to the weak fluid–solid interaction. In vortex-induced resonance region, the wall heating makes each row tube be out of phase by affecting the vortex shedding and reduces the positive feedback of resonance, which reduces the amplitude. The wall heating reduces the damping of coupling system, which causes an earlier transition from vortex-induced resonance to fluidelastic instability and a faster increase of amplitude in fluidelastic instability. In both vortex-induced resonance and fluidelastic instability, the vibration of tube bundle dominates the vortex shedding by the natural frequency, and further dominates the change of heat transfer. The best performance of enhanced heat transfer induced by FIV is located in vortex-induced resonance region, in which the time–space averaged Nusselt number is increased by 8.83%. Due to the redistribution of flow field and the elimination of deflective flow pattern, compared with vortex-induced resonance, the increasing ratio of heat transfer induced by FIV is lower and the increasing ratio of pressure drop induced by FIV is higher in the fluidelastic instability.