Air side performance at low Reynolds number of cross-flow heat exchanger using crimped spiral fins

Abstract

A total of 23 cross-flow heat exchangers having crimped spiral configurations is studied. The effect of tube diameter, fin spacing, transverse tube pitch, and tube arrangements are examined. For the inline arrangement, the pressure drop increases with the rise of tube diameter but the associated heat transfer coefficient decreases with it. The increase of fin height also gives rise to considerable increase of pressure drop and decrease of heat transfer coefficients for the inline arrangement. However, for the staggered arrangement, the effect of the fin height on the pressure drop is much smaller than that of the inline arrangement due to the major contribution to the total pressure drops from the blockage of the airflow from staggered arrangement. Effect of the fin spacing on the air side performance is strongly related to the transverse tube pitch for both inline and staggered arrangements. Correlations of the present crimped spiral fins in both staggered and inline arrangements are developed. The proposed correlations give fairly good predictive ability against the present test data. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.