CFD analysis and heat transfer characteristics of finned tube heat exchangers

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to fulfill the parametric analysis on the heating performance of a compact automotive radiator using computational fluid dynamics. The analysis has been carried out at different air velocities with different fins modeling as real fins and as porous media. SC-Tetra computational fluid dynamics software was used for this study. The fluids are incompressible; the flow was three-dimensional and turbulent. The geometry of the fins has a high impact to the heat transfer coefficient and the heat performance, so the shape, the size and the thickness of the fins are compared to each other. The results show that the ratio of the fin pitch, the wall thickness of the fins, the number of the fins, the flow depth and the geometry of the tube are the main factors of the heat transfer. The main goal is to find a dependable Nu-number correlation for this type of heat exchanger. Furthermore with the usage of this function the goal is to find the optimal shape of the radiator, which can decrease the temperature of the cooling liquid to the necessary value and has the smallest weight.