An experimental study of the air-side performance of fin-and-tube heat exchangers having plain, louver, and semi-dimple vortex generator configuration

In this study, a comparative study of the airside performance of fin-and-tube heat exchangers having plain, louver, and semi-dimple vortex generator (VG) are made. A total of eighteen samples are made and tested with the corresponding fin pitch (Fp) being 1.6 mm and 2.0 mm and the number of tube row (N) are 1, 2 and 4, respectively. Test results indicate that the heat transfer coefficient for N = 1 for louver fin geometry with a smaller fin pitch of 1.6 mm is higher than that of semi-dimple VG and plain fin geometry. For N = 1 with a larger fin pitch of 2.0 mm, the semi-dimple VG is marginally higher than that of louver fin geometry when the frontal velocity is lower than 2 m s−1. However, the trend is reversed where the heat transfer coefficient for louver fin outperforms that of semi-dimple VG when the velocity is increased further. For the airside performance for N = 2 or N = 4, the heat transfer coefficients for louver fin geometry is about 2–15% higher than those of semi-dimple geometry. The difference is increased with the rising velocity and the results prevail for both fin pitches. However, the difference is smaller at a larger fin pitch due to the comparatively effectively swirled motion of the semi-dimple VG. The effect of the number of tube row on the heat transfer coefficients is negligible for louver fin geometry and is also rather small for semi-dimple VG. For the plain fin geometry, the effect of tube row is also small when N > 1. The heat transfer performance for N = 1 is different from N = 2 or N = 4 due to its inline configuration.