Thermo-hydraulic performance and exergy analysis of a fin-and-tube heat exchanger with sinusoidal wavy winglet type vortex generators

Abstract The widely used fin-and-tube heat exchangers have a low air-side heat transfer capacity. Enhancing the air-side thermo-hydraulic performance is a key point of the relevant research. Vortex generators have been proven to be one of the most promising techniques to improve the air-side heat transfer capacity of the fin-and-tube heat exchangers. Herein, this paper proposed an original sinusoidal wavy winglet type vortex generator to achieve high heat transfer performance with moderate increased pressure drop penalty. A three-dimensional numerical simulation was conducted to explore the air-side thermo-hydraulic performance with Reynolds number ranging from 1027 to 2054. The longitudinal vortex is generated in the channel so as to enhance the intensify of convective heat transfer. Especially, the wave-shaped vortex generators can produce many local small-scale secondary flows. And it is confirmed that the frontal area of the vortex generator can be effectively extended by such wavy shape and a more intensified disturbance can be caused in the air-side. Furthermore, the effects of the attack angle (α), dimensionless height (Hp) and especially arrange position of the vortex generator were investigated. Additionally, the ranges of the Nusselt number ratio, friction factor ratio and surafece goodness factor in this study are 1.09–1.52, 1.09–2.31, and 1.06–1.24, respectively. Moreover, it is also very crucial to evalute the grade of energy and to explore the irreversible loss druing the heat tranfer process in view of the second law of thermodynamics. And the thermal dissipation can be reduced by up to 5.85% compared with the plain fins from the perspective of exergy analysis.