•  
  •  
 

Turkish Journal of Mathematics

Author ORCID Identifier

HAMDİ ÇELİK: 0000-0003-2538-7486

BAHADIR DOĞAN: 0000-0003-4648-1375

LATİFE ERBAY: 0000-0001-7302-0588

Abstract

In this study, the thermo-hydraulic characteristics of an air-cooled triangular finned tube heat exchanger were analyzed numerically. The full-scale heat exchanger was modeled using Ansys Fluent watertight workflow, considering water as the primer fluid to precisely investigate the effects of geometrical factors. The effects of fin height, fin width, and fin spacing of the triangular fins on the performance of the heat exchanger were examined using k-ω turbulence model. A basic finned-tube heat exchanger model, which was manufactured as a monolithic structure without tube-fin contact resistance by milling from aluminum 5083 material, was tested in an air tunnel to verify the numerical model in the Reynolds number range of 900-6000. The outcomes reveal that the triangular fin profile offers unique hydraulic advantages; unlike conventional designs, increasing the fin width or decreasing the fin pitch led to a reduction in the friction factor. This is attributed to the aerodynamic profile mitigating flow separation and the relative increase in surface area outweighing the rise in pressure drop. Based on an analysis of 66 different triangular fin geometries, novel empirical correlations were formulated to predict air-side performance. The resulting Nusselt number correlation captures 96% of the data within a ±4% error band, while the friction factor correlation accounts for 94% of the data within ±10%. Mean deviations for the proposed Nusselt number and f-factor correlations were calculated at 1.8% and 4.2%, confirming the high predictive reliability of both expressions.

DOI

10.55730/1300-0098.3777

Keywords

Fin and tube heat exchanger, triangular fin, Nusselt number, friction factor

First Page

970

Last Page

988

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download

Included in

Mathematics Commons

Share

COinS