An Experimental Study on Heat Transfer Surface Area of Wavy Fin Heat Exchangers

Abstract

Effects of wavyfins surface area on thermalhydraulic performance of a heat exchanger have been observed. First, a new method to calculate the heat transfer area of wavyfin surfaces is introduced. The results show that the proposed method is accurate enough to be used in the analysis of heat exchanger performance. One of the important aspects of this method is that it is a direct method compared with the experimental method introduced by Kays and London, and thus might be a strong tool in the optimization of heat exchangers based on different objective functions. Effects of some nondimensional parameters, such as amplitudetowavelength ratio, fin space ratio, and channel crosssection ratio on the heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop are also investigated.