Wing-shaped Heat Exchanger Tubes: A Comparative Study

Heat exchangers play a vital role in almost all fields of industry ranging from condensers and evaporators in refrigerating units to radiators of automobiles . The strive for obtaining better energy efficiency and cost savings has made the industry to constantly upgrade the technology associated with heat exchangers to improve their heat transfer efficency , reduce the size and also to lower production costs .This has resulted in research into various tube shapes used in heat exchagers including wing-shaped tubes that can improve the heat exchange efficiency .A study was carried out to compare the performance of heat exchangers with staggered banks of tubes with wing-shaped cross sections and cylindrical tubes under turbulent flow conditions. Detailed 2D- numerical simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer were performed for various pitch to diameter ratios using Computational Fluid Dynamics . When compared to the normal cylindrical tubes better heat exchange was observed in wing-shaped tubes which could be due to more attached flow happening in this case due to the wing-shape.