Influence of flow topology on the heat transfer upstream a single plate-finned tube

A numerical study of the influence of flow topology on the heat transfer upstream a single plate-finned tube is presented in this paper. Investigations have been carried out for three fin spacing E/D= 0.13, 0.2, 0.27 and different Reynolds number ReD, ranging from 1400 to 3840 using a computational fluid dynamic code. The results are compared with heat transfer visualization performed by infrared thermography system. It is shown that calculations reproduce correctly the heat transfer distribution and results are very close to the experimental data qualitatively. A strong dependence of the heat transfer on the flow structure is observed by increasing the fin-spacing and the Reynolds number.