Numerical study of flow and heat transfer characteristics in outward convex corrugated tubes

The flow and heat transfer characteristics in convex corrugated tubes have been investigated through numerical simulations in this paper. Two kinds of tube types named as symmetric corrugated tube (SCT) and asymmetric corrugated tube (ACT) are modeled and studied numerically based on the k-ε model. The heat transfer working fluid at shell and tube sides are nitrogen and helium gases respectively. 2D axisymmetric model is adopted to simplify 3D model in order to reduce the computation cost greatly. Numerical simulation results for flow and heat transfer performances in SCT and ACT with various geometrical parameters, including corrugation pitch, corrugation height and corrugation trough radii are systematically analyzed. The mechanisms behind the improvement of overall performances of the simulated outward convex corrugated tube are discussed through investigating the details of turbulent velocity fields at both tube and shell sides. Compared to SCT, ACT exhibits 8–18% higher overall heat transfer performance.