Effect of longitudinal pitch on the convection heat transfer from the tube banks in crossflow

When the tube banks in the heat exchanger are compactly designed, it is known that the average heat transfer coefficient is reduced compared with that of widely-designed tube banks. Thus, the heat transfer rate calculated by the usual heat transfer correlation will be over-estimated more than the actual one and the heat exchanger with such a design will have insufficient heat transfer capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the effect of longitudinal and transverse pitches on the heat transfer, quantitatively. Zukauskas correlated various experimental data for aligned and staggered arrangements of tube banks as a function of Reynolds number and Prandtl number. In addition, Grimison suggested the heat transfer correlation for tube banks whose coefficients are determined by geometrical characteristics. However, Zukauskas correlation does not consider the effect of longitudinal and transverse pitches in the case of the aligned arrangement and Grimison correlation can only be used for specific geometrical arrangement such as 1.25X1.25, 1.50X1.50, and so on. Therefore, additional correlation for a heat transfer coefficient which covers a wide range of a pitch is required to predict the heat transfer rate appropriately. In this study, as a first step, the effect of a longitudinal pitch on the heat transfer is investigated for aligned tube banks by using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) code