Numerical Investigation of Forced Convection From Small Rectangular Coiled Pipes

Investigations are done to numerically analyze forced convection from rectangular coiled pipes using commercial CFD software Fluent 6.0. The problems considered were three-dimensional laminar flow with water inside and outside the pipe. Calculations are done for two rectangular coiled pipes of different values of pitch (distance between two adjacent coils centers). The shift of location of the water flow maximum velocity was significantly observed in the case of smaller pitch. It is expected that the higher pitch value reduces the effects of the torsion. The shift of the flow maximum velocity area allows the fluid to be mixed well inside the pipe. For the outside flow, the flow behavior and the heat transfer should be improved by increasing the outside inlet velocity for the case of small pitch.