Airside friction and heat transfer performance of micro‐bare‐tube heat exchangers with bundle diameters varying gradually from 1.0 to 0.4 mm

Abstract

In this paper, a micro‐bare‐tube heat exchanger structure with the tube bundle diameter varying gradually in the range of 1.0–0.4 mm is proposed. The airside friction and heat transfer performance correlations for this structure are given. This paper applies CFD simulation to develop and verify the correlation of the diameter gradually varied micro‐bare‐tube heat exchangers' performance. Compared with the traditional same diameter micro‐bare‐tube heat exchanger, the new structure not only reduces the pressure drop, but also improves the thermal hydraulic performance. The friction coefficient f is decreased by 8.59%, the pressure drop is reduced by 43.14%, the heat transfer coefficient j is increased by 12.07% compared to the constant diameter micro‐bare‐tube heat exchanger. At the same time, it reduces the void volume by 47.32% and the tube bundle manufacturing material by 28.57%. The proposed airside performance prediction equation can make the error of more than 70% source data within 10%, and the error of more than 90% source data within 20%. It is suggested to apply this empirical equation to 7–29 rows.