Thermohydraulics of Turbulent Flow Through Heat Exchanger Tubes Fitted with Circular-rings and Twisted Tapes

The influences of circular-ring turbulators (CRT) and twisted tape (TT) swirl generators on the heat transfer enhancement, pressure drop and thermal performance factor characteristics in a round tube are reported. The circular-ring turbulators were individually employed and together with the twisted tape swirl generators in the heated section of the tube. Three different pitch ratios (l/D = 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0) of the CRT and three different twist ratios (y/W = 3, 4, and 5) of the TT were introduced. The experiments were conducted using air as the working fluid under a uniform wall heat flux condition, for the Reynolds number between 6000 and 20000. The experimental results reveal that the heat transfer rate, friction factor and thermal performance factor of the combined CRT and TT are considerably higher than those of CRT alone. For the range examined, the increases of mean Nusselt number, friction factor and thermal performance, in the tube equipped with combined devices, respectively, are 25.8%, 82.8% and 6.3% over those in the tube with the CRT alone. The highest thermal performance factor of 1.42 is found for the combined device consisting of the CRT with l/D = 1.0 and TT with y/W = 3. The correlations of the Nusselt number, friction factor and thermal performance factor of the tubes with combined devices are also developed in terms of Reynolds number, Prandtl number, twist ratio and pitch ratio.