Numerical modeling of finned heat exchangers

A numerical investigation of annular finned tubes was performed. The objective was to determine the effect of fin spacing, fin height, fin thickness, and fin material on the overall heat transfer and pressure drop. It was assumed that cold water was inside the tubes while hot flue gas was on the outside. The commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS FLUENT was used to perform the numerical simulations [7]. For the purposes of this study a single row of finned tubes in cross flow was modeled.