Passive heat transfer enhancement in 3D corrugated tube

An innovative hydraulic design was studied for corrugated tube geometry for a heat exchanger. An ellipse based double corrugation was used as a concept of the geometry. The hydraulic diameter (Dh) is maintained over the tube length while the shape of the cross section varies continuously along the flow direction. 38 corrugated tubes with a Dh of 5 mm were studied numerically with corrugation heights from 0.23 to 0.69 mm and corrugation periods from 5 to 50 mm for laminar flow with water.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used as a tool to study the effect of corrugation geometry on heat transfer and fluid flow with a constant wall temperature and total pressure drop. The governing equations for these problems were solved using the Finite Element Method. The results of numerical modelling show significant increase in NTU for double corrugated tubes compared to a circular tube.

The friction factor increases with increasing of severity index, which represents the degree of tube roughness.