Effect of Tube Diameter on Heat Transfer through Staggered Tube Bundles of Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Cross-flow over tube bundle is generally encountered in practice in heat transfer equipments such as
evaporators and condensers of power plants, air conditioners, refrigerators. In such equipment, one fluid moves through
the tubes while the other moves over the tubes in a perpendicular direction. Steady state Navier-stokes and the energy
equations are applied for cylinders having diameter of tube 0.02, 0.03 and 0.04m having constant p/d ratio for staggered
tube layout to obtain the numerical solutions of governing equations using Finite Element Method. .The effect of change
of diameter of tube on heat transfer and pressure drop has been analyzed using CFD tool. The contours of streamlines,
pressure, velocity and temperature are generated to study the effect of change in diameter of tube. The purpose of this
study is to investigate the heat transfer and pressure characteristics at various tube diameters for staggered tube bundle
layouts in cross-flow. The result shows that as the diameter of tube increases the heat transfer increases with decrease in
temperature and pressure drops.