3D simulative investigation of heat transfer enhancement using three vortex generator types surrounding tube in plate fin heat exchanger

Abstract

Vortex generator is a method to enhancing of heat exchanger performance but still have some disadvantages when the heat transfer performance increase. One of the disadvantage using vortex generator is high pressure drop. This investigation will be compared three type vortex generators to result the overall performance of heat transfer around tube in plate fin heat exchanger. The three types of vortex generator to investigate are rectangular winglet type, delta winglet type, and trapezoidal winglet type in laminar flow. The result showed that using the kind of trapezoidal winglet pair type in the plate fin and tube heat exchanger consist of six rows of round tube with two neighboring fins form a channel better performance than two types vortex generators such as rectangular winglet type and delta winglet type. The heat transfer coefficient when use trapezoidal winglet type was increased almost same with rectangular winglet type and pressure drop was decreased more than delta winglet type.