EXPERIMENTAL AND CFD ANALYSIS OF TURBULENT FLOW HEAT TRANSFER IN TUBULAR EXCHANGER

The phenomenon of forced convection with turbulent flow of industrial processes is complicated to develop analytically. The only key to the problem is empirical models and numerical solutions. Heat transfer coefficient (h) and friction factor are very important parameters for fluid flow systems due to their use in determining the heat transfer rate and the pressure drop of the system respectively. Many of coefficient formulas have been obtained from the application of simple statistical techniques to large datasets, taking into account several engine operational parameters and engine types. The resulting correlations provide reasonable estimates but perform poorly rather than extrapolated to novel concepts. So, the feasibility and accuracy of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) by using FLUENT to estimate the convective heat transfer coefficients is examined. The heat transfer coefficient values are estimated by empirical correlations from literature and CFD simulation then compared with experimental data for air flow at operating conditions of the experiment. The results obtained by CFD were in good agreement with both experimental data and empirical correlations of literature. This result reveals to CFD as an accurate tools to predicting heat transfer coefficient for turbulence flow of the industrial process.