Single -phase heat transfer and pressure drop of water cooled at a constant wall temperature inside horizontal circular smooth and enhanced tubes with different inlet configuration in the transitional flow regime

Abstract

It is common practice to design water chiller units and heat exchangers in such a way that they do not operate within the transition region. This is mainly due to the perceived chaotic behaviour as well as the paucity of information in this region. Due to design constraints or change of operating conditions, however, exchangers are often forced to operate in this region. This is even worse for enhanced tubes as much less information within this region is available. It is also well known that the entrance has an influence on where transition occurs, adding to the woes of available information. The purpose of this study is thus to obtain heat transfer and friction factor data in the transition region of fully developed and developing flows inside smooth and enhanced tubes, using water as the working fluid, and to develop correlations from these results. The use of different inlets, tube diameters and enhanced tubes was also investigated with regards to the commencement of transition. Heat transfer and pressure drop data were obtained from six different types of tubes with diameters of 15.88 mm (5/8′′) and 19.02 mm (3/4′′). Low fin enhanced tubes with a fin height to diameter ratio of 0.4 and helix angles of 18◦ and 27◦ were investigated. Heat transfer was obtained by means of an in-tube heat exchanger with the cooling of water being used as the test fluid. Reynolds numbers ranged between 1 000 and 20 000 while Prandtl numbers were in the order of 4 to 6. Uncertainties in heat transfer coefficient and friction factors were on average below 2.5% and 10% respectively. Adiabatic friction factor results showed that the use of different inlets influenced the commencement of transition. The smoother the inlet profile the more transition was delayed, confirming previous work done. The effect of increasing tube diameters had a slight delay in transition. Enhanced tubes caused transition to occur at lower Reynolds numbers which was accounted for by the fin height and not the helix angle. Heat transfer results showed that transition occurred at approximately the same Reynolds number for all the different inlets and enhanced tubes. This was attributed to the secondary flow forces influencing the growing hydrodynamic boundary layer. These secondary flow forces also influenced the laminar heat transfer and diabatic friction factors with both these parameters being higher. Turbulent enhanced tube heat transfer results were higher than those of the smooth tube, with the tube with the greatest helix angle showing the greatest increase. Correlations were developed for all the tubes and their inlets and predicted all the data on average to within 3%.