Heat Conduction Through Heat Exchanger Tubes of Noncircular Cross Section

摘要

Conduction through shaped tubes with circular inner surface and hydrodynamically shaped outer surface has been analyzed by two different techniques. A two-dimensional analysis has been made by a semianalytical technique using boundary collocation at the outer periphery. A one-dimensional approximate technique called sector method shows a closed agreement with the two-dimensional analysis. The present work gives an improvement on the analysis of Li et al. (2004, "Heat Transfer Enhancement Using Shaped Polymer Tubes: Fin Analysis," ASME J. Heat Transfer, 126, pp. 211-218) who solved the same problem using a one-dimensional approximation following the methodology of fin analysis. Both the present methods relax some of the approximations taken by Li et al. Further, the suggested one-dimensional sector method is simple and requires limited computational effort.