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Abstract: Air is a cheap and safe fluid, widely used in electronic, aerospace and air conditioning applications. Because of its poor heat transfer properties, it usually flows through extended surfaces, such as finned surfaces, to enhance the convective heat transfer. In this paper, experimental results are reviewed and numerical studies during turbulent air forced convection through extended surfaces are presented. The thermal and hydraulic behavior of a reference trapezoidal finned surface, experimentally evaluated by present authors in an open-circuit wind tunnel, has been compared with numerical simulations carried out by using the commercial CFD software COMSOL Multiphysics. Once the model has been validated, numerical simulations have been extended to other rectangular finned configurations, in order to study the effects of the fin thickness, fin pitch and fin height on the thermo-hydraulic behavior of the extended surfaces. Moreover, several pin fin surfaces have been simulated in the same range of operating conditions previously analyzed. Numerical results about heat transfer and pressure drop, both for plain finned surfaces and for pin fin surfaces, have been compared with empirical correlations from the open literature, and more accurate equations have been developed and proposed. As shown with an optimization example, these new equations can be used as an easy-to-implement calculation approach for heat sink design in electronic thermal management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The work presented in this paper investigates the degradation effect of flow maldistribution on the thermal and hydraulic performance of a heat exchanger. A new mathematical model is derived based on Taylor series expansion to describe the contribution of each of the four statistical moments of distribution on the degradation problem. It is found that the first two moments, i.e. mean and standard deviation, have the highest effect on the performance degradation. Subsequent higher moments will give declining degradation effects until the fourth moment, kurtosis, which has no significant effect. Maldistribution with low standard deviation and high positive skew will give low thermal deteriorations, though a distribution with negative skew is preferred for low hydraulic performance losses. The design of the heat exchanger could be modified to give these favourable moments which would minimize the degradation effects of the maldistribution. Consequently, any effort to modify the flow distribution profile should be focused on optimizing the first three moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A computational model is developed to describe the thermo-fluid-dynamic behaviour of a helically coiled steam generator device working with water and widely adopted in the nuclear industry. The discretized governing equations are coupled using an implicit step by step method. The mathematical model includes: a subcooled liquid region, a two-phase flow region, and a superheated vapour region (according to the once-through nature of the heat exchanger). All the flow variables (enthalpies, temperatures, pressures, vapour qualities, velocities, heat fluxes, etc.), together with the thermo-physical properties, are evaluated at each point of the grid in which the domain is discretized. A full-scale experimental investigation carried out at SIET thermal-hydraulics labs in Piacenza (Italy), and aimed at characterizing the fluid-dynamic behaviour of two-phase flows in helically coiled tubes, is referenced in the present paper. Two-phase pressure drops data reduction allowed optimizing a suitable form of the friction factor multiplier required by momentum balance equation. Comparisons of the numerical simulations with a wide range of two-phase pressure drops measurements (experiments conducted both in diabatic and adiabatic conditions) are shown in order to validate the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]