Analysis of Heat Transfer Enhancement in Tubes With Capsule Dimpled Surfaces and Al2o3-Water Nanofluid

Abstract

This study aims to numerically investigate and evaluate the enhancement of heat transfer by new capsule dimples on tube surfaces for flow of water and Al2O3-water nanofluid with different concentrations, under uniform surface heat flux. The originality of this work lies in combining two passive heat transfer enhancement methods such as geometrical improvements and nanofluids together. Capsule dimples with different depths were considered. Al2O3- water nanofluid was modeled as a single-phase flow based on the mixture properties. The effects of dimple depth and nanoparticle concentrations on Nusselt number, friction factor and performance evaluation criteria (PEC) were studied. Numerical computations were performed using ANSYS Fluent commercial software for 2000-14000 Reynolds number range. It was found that when laminar, transient and fully developed turbulent flow cases are considered, increase in the dimple depth increases the Nusselt number and friction factor for both pure water and Al2O3-water nanofluids cases. Also, the friction factor increases as dimple depth increases. Results show that increase in PEC is more pronounced in the laminar region than in the transition region, it starts to decrease for turbulent flows. For nanofluid, PEC values are considerably higher than pure water cases. The variation of PEC for capsule dimpled tubes are dependent on flow regimes and dimple depths. Increasing the nano particle volume concentration and dimple depth in laminar flows increase the PEC significantly.