Heat transfer in a bank of tubes with integral wake splitters

Abstract

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.

The paper deals with the investigations on heat transfer characteristics of a circular tube as well as tube banks with integral downstream splitter plates in cross flow of air in a rectangular duct. The experiments were carried out in the Reynolds number range 5 x 103 to 105 on single plain cylinder and single cylinder of various splitter length-to-tube diameter ratios, L/D = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. Further, tube banks consisting of 12 rows and 3 tubes per row in equilateral triangle arrangement with transverse pitch to diameter ratio, a = 2, were also investigated, the banks being made up of plain tubes or tubes with splitters. Heat transfer characteristics were studied for tubes with L/D = 0, 0.5 and 1.0 under constant heat flux conditions. Tube banks with L/D = 1.0 yielded the highest heat transfer rates. They were also superior to single tubes with L/D = 1.0.