Convective Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Circular Tube Using Twisted Tape

The secondary flow has been used frequently to enhance the convective heat transfer, and at the same flow condition, the intensity of convective heat transfer closely depends on the thermal boundary conditions. Thus far, there is less reported information about the sensitivity of heat transfer enhancement to thermal boundary conditions by using secondary flow. To account for this sensitivity, the laminar convective heat transfer in a circular tube fitted with twisted tape was investigated numerically. The effects of conduction in the tape on the Nusselt number, the relationship between the absolute vorticity flux and the Nusselt number, the sensitivity of heat transfer enhancement to the thermal boundary conditions by using secondary flow, and the effects of secondary flow on the flow boundary layer were discussed. The results reveal that (1) for fully developed laminar heat convective transfer, different tube wall thermal boundaries lead to different effects of conduction in the tape on heat transfer characteristics; (2) the Nusselt number is closely dependent on the absolute vorticity flux; (3) the efficiency of heat transfer enhancement is dependent on both the tube wall thermal boundaries and the intensity of secondary flow, and the ratio of Nusselt number with twisted tape to its counterpart with straight tape decreases with increasing twist ratio while it increases with increasing Reynolds number for both uniform wall temperature (UWT) and uniform heat flux (UHF) conditions; (4) the difference in the ratio between UWT and UHF conditions is also strongly dependent on the conduction in the tape and the intensity of the secondary flow; and (5) the twist ratio ranging from 4.0 to 6.0 does not necessarily change the main flow velocity boundary layer near tube wall, while Reynolds number has effects on the shape of the main flow velocity boundary layer near tube wall only in small regions.