Numerical study of an innovative design of a finned double-pipe heat exchanger with variable fin-tip thickness

• Variable fin tip angle significantly effect the velocity and temperature distribution.
• Significant gain in the thermal performance with decrease in the friction factor.
• Variable fin tip angle must be considered an important parameter in designing finned annulus.

The analysis of fully developed laminar convective heat transfer in an innovate design of a finned double-pipe heat exchanger (DPHE) with longitudinal fins of variable thickness of the tip subjected to the constant heat transfer rate boundary conditions is investigated here. The tip thickness is controlled by the ratio of tip to base angles as a parameter whose values varying from 0 to 1 correspond to the fin shapes varying from the triangular to the rectangular cross-section. Upto the knowledge of the authors, this parameter is being introduced for the first time in the literature. Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DG-FEM) has been employed in the present work. The overall performance of the proposed DPHE has been investigated by considering the friction factor, the Nusselt number and the j-factor. Upto 178% gain in the Nusselt number and 89% gain in the j-factor have been achieved relative to the rectangular cross-section. Such gains relative to the triangular cross-section are respectively 9.5% and 19%. The results indicate that the newly introduced parameter the ratio of tip to base angles has proved to play significant role in the design of a double-pipe heat exchanger in reducing the cost, weight and frictional loss, in improving the heat transfer rate and making the exchanger energy-efficient. Therefore, it must be considered as an important design parameter for heat exchanger design.