
Optimally staggered finned circular and elliptic tubes in forced convection
This work presents a numerical and experimental geometric optimization study to maximize the total heat transfer rate between a bundle of finned or non-finned tubes in a given volume and a given external flow both for circular and elliptic arrangements, for general staggered configurations. The optimization procedure started by recognizing the design limited space availability as a fixed volume constraint. The experimental results were obtained for circular and elliptic configurations with a fixed number of tubes (12), starting with an equilateral triangle configuration, which fitted uniformly into the fixed volume with a resulting maximum dimensionless tube-to-tube spacing S/2b=1.5, where S is the actual spacing and b is the smaller ellipse semi-axis. Several experimental configurations were built by reducing the tube-to-tube spacings, identifying the optimal spacing for maximum heat transfer. Similarly, it was possible to investigate the existence of optima with respect to other two geometric degrees of freedom, i.e., tube eccentricity and fin-to-fin spacing. The results are reported for air as the external fluid, in the range 852≤Re
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- Mechanical Engineering & Transports
- 51 Physical sciences
- 49 Mathematical sciences
- 40 Engineering
- 09 Engineering
- 02 Physical Sciences
- 01 Mathematical Sciences
Citation

Published In
DOI
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Mechanical Engineering & Transports
- 51 Physical sciences
- 49 Mathematical sciences
- 40 Engineering
- 09 Engineering
- 02 Physical Sciences
- 01 Mathematical Sciences