Heat transfer and pressure drop of Al2O3/water nanofluid in a tube equipped with double twisted tape inserts with different pitch ratios

In this paper, the effects of dual twisted tape inserts with different pitches on turbulent heat transfer and pressure drop are numerically investigated. A nanofluid is flowed inside a circular tube, which is under a constant heat flux condition. The Reynolds number varies from 5000 to 20 000 at a fixed Prandtl number of 7. Nine different cases are considered in the current study; three cases consist of a single twisted tape insert, three cases are related to twin twisted tapes with identical pitches, and the remaining cases consist of dual twisted tapes with different pitches for each insert. The predicted results indicate that inserting a dual twisted tape effectively increases the heat transfer 1.5 times more than that of the single insert with the penalty of high pressure drop. Also, the relative Nusselt number decreases with increase in Reynolds number for all the investigated cases. The heat transfer rates induced by dual inserts with different pitch ratios are higher than those with identical pitch ratios. Moreover, the maximum and minimum thermal performances belong to cases with Tr-1 = 2, Tr-2 = 3 and Tr-1 = 2, Tr-2 = 2, respectively. And finally, it is stated here that adding nanoparticles improves the thermal performance of all cases in all the investigated Reynolds numbers.