A study of the enhanced heat transfer of flow-induced vibration of a new type of heat transfer tube bundle—The planar bending elastic tube bundle

Highlights: • This tube bundle's vibration modes contain transverse and longitudinal vibration modes. • The fluid can induce this tube bundle vibration along all directions. • The heat transfer enhancement effect of flow-induced the tube bundle vibration is obvious. - Abstract: Based on the idea of fully using flow-induced transverse vibration to enhance heat transfer, this paper proposes a new type of elastic heat transfer element—the planar bending elastic tube bundle. This elastic tube bundle has a large heat transfer area per unit volume and a small gap between the transverse and longitudinal stiffness. The inherent characteristics are numerically studied. The results showed that the natural vibration forms of the elastic tube bundle include the longitudinal vibration forms and the transverse vibration forms, and the two types of vibration modes appear alternately. In addition, the characteristics of flow-induced vibration and heat transfer are researched. Because the first two orders of the natural vibration modes are longitudinal vibration and transverse vibration, respectively, and the two vibration frequencies are low and similar, at the low flow velocity, the cross flow could induce the elastic tube bundle vibration along the three-dimensional directions. Along the X and Z axis directions, the two monitoring points A and B have the same vibration amplitude value and phase, whereas in the Y axis direction, the two monitoring points have a 180-degree phase difference, which is determined by the first-order and second-order natural vibration forms. The range of amplitudes of monitoring points A and B is from 2.3 mm to 5.3 mm, in agreement with the amplitude range of the heat transfer enhancement by flow-induced vibration. The effect of heat transfer enhancement of flow-induced tube bundle vibration is obvious. With the increase in flow velocity, the influence of tube vibration on heat transfer enhancement decreases greatly. Within the scope of this research, compared with the heat transfer of the still tube bundle in the same condition, the average heat transfer coefficient of the flow-induced planar bending elastic tube bundle vibration is 2.64 times that of the static tube bundle.