Heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics in a swirl cooling tube with dimples on the tube inner surface

This paper presents a numerical study of heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics in a swirl cooling tube with five tangential inlet jets and with dimples on the tube inner surface. The swirl tube has a length of 20 times the tube diameter, and the Reynolds number based on the tube diameter ranges from 10,000 to 40,000. Polyhedral meshes as well as the SST k-ω turbulence model were chosen for the numerical calculations. A swirl cooling system with a smooth tube was investigated as baseline, and comparatively with dimples on the tube inner surface. The results showed different swirling flow and heat transfer patterns in the swirl tubes. Dimples on the tube inner surface can reduce the wetted-area averaged heat transfer coefficient on the tube inner surface. However, the total heat transferred in the dimpled swirl cooling tubes can be increased by up to 7.2% due to the increased heat transfer area and the interactions between the swirling flow and the dimpled wall. On the other hand, the pressure loss in the dimpled tube can be appreciably reduced by up to 17.6% compared with that of the smooth swirl tube. Detailed flow interactions between the jets, the tube wall and the dimples are illustrated to explain the heat transfer change and pressure loss reduction mechanisms.