A Numerical And Experimental Study of Louvered Fin Heat Exchanger Performance

Abstract

The louvered fin heat exchanger is a very widely used method to increase thecompact heat transfer coefficient on the air-side of condensers by adding fins andinitiating new boundary layer growth and increasing surface area. The governingequations of such application are the Navier Steckes equation and energy equation. Atwo-dimensional, turbulent, compressible flow is simulated and solved. The solutiongives the distributions of velocity and temperature (which is represented by Nusseltnumber). Laminar and turbulent flow were studied experimentally and only turbulentflow was studied theoretically, for a range of ReLp 230 to 8100 with constant inlettemperature of 21C˚with two angles of louver fin 27˚ and 35 ˚. The ideal geometry forheat transfer performance was determined to be dependent on Reynolds number. Atlower Reynolds number the optimal geometry was found to be θ = 27º and at highReynolds number the ideal geometry was determined to beθ = 35º, Fp/Lp = 0.587