Transitional Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics in a Rectangular Duct with Stagger-arrayed Short Pin Fins

This article describes an experimental study on friction and heat transfer performances of a transitional airflow in a rectangular channel with stagger-arrayed short pin fins. Friction factors, average Nusselt numbers and overall thermal performances of the transitional flow are obtained. The experimental study has showed that the pin fins enhance the heat transfer performance significantly, however increasing the flow frictional resistance considerably. After comparing the experimental results with the published data in references, it can be concluded that, in the transitional flow region, the pin fin channels of the proposed geometrical configuration could lead to a significant improvement of an overall thermal performance; for instance, the convective heat transfer performance is increased by at least 68%. By contrast, in the fully turbulent flow region, the ability of the proposed pin fin channels to increase heat transfer performances decreases as the Reynolds number increases. When Re > 6 000, the overall thermal performance becomes lower than the others.