THE HEAT AND FLUID FLOW ANALYSIS FOR WATER HEATER

In this paper, the heat transfer and fluid flow are studied for the water heater of RV cars, in which the hot water is heated by the combustion energy of liquefied petroleum gases. Three types of combustion tubes are performed in this investigation, which are circular tube, elliptic tube and elliptic tube with screwed wire inserted. The heat transfer performances of numerical simulation results are compared with those of the experimental works; they are in good trend agreement. The elliptic combustion tube performs better than the circular one, which indicates the average 7% energy saving for the elliptic combustion tube and 12% energy saving for the elliptic combustion tube with screwed wire under static heating.