A numerical and experimental study of louvered fin heat exchanger performance

Abstract EN

The louvered fin heat exchanger is a very widely used method to increase the compact heat transfer coefficient on the air-side of condensers by adding fins and initiating new boundary layer growth and increasing surface area.

The governing equations of such application are the Navier Steckes equation and energy equation.

A two-dimensional, turbulent, compressible flow is simulated and solved.

The solution gives the distributions of velocity and temperature (which is represented by Nusselt number).

Laminar and turbulent flow were studied experimentally and only turbulent flow was studied theoretically, for a range of ReLp 230 to 8100 with constant inlet temperature of 21C?with two angles of louver fin 27˚ and 35 ˚.

The ideal geometry for heat transfer performance was determined to be dependent on Reynolds number.

At lower Reynolds number the optimal geometry was found to be θ = 27˚ and at high Reynolds number the ideal geometry was determined to be θ = 35˚, Fp / Lp = 0.587