Experimental study for laminar forced convection heat transfer enhancement from horizontal tube heated with constant heat flux, by using different types of porous media

Abstract

Abstract Forced convective heat transfer for water flowing through a circular pipe oriented horizontally has been investigated experimentally. the pipe was heated at constant heat flux and also packed with two different types of particles (steel and mixture of steel & plastic) as a porous media. The flow features are an internal, laminar, incompressible and steady flow for a wide range of Reynolds numbers (500,1000 and 1500) with variable heat flux (200, 400 and 600 W) for each case and three times for each number. The experimental results comprehended temperature recording on different positions of test sections at steady state depending on the effect of the porous media type and Reynolds number employed (which indicate to the mass flux) in addition to the value of heat flux. The results of the study are represented in terms of temperature distribution to show temperature behaviors in the pipe, besides other diagrams uptake relation of the local and average Nusselt number with data aforementioned above. For each porous type, the results show an increase in local and average Nusselt number with increasing of the Reynold number for steel and mixture porous media respectively. It has obverse from this study that in a porous steel media the heat transfer will occur mainly by conduction, while in the other types of porous media that the heat transfer will occur mainly by forced convection.