Visualization of flow characteristics between the ribbed plates via particle image velocimetry

Abstract

Heat transfer is considerably influenced by flow stagnation, separation and reattachment regions due to the ribbed plates. Placing the ribs such as fins, turbulators that trigger the flow separation, enhances the heat transfer inside the channel by increasing the turbulence intensity. The flow separation is caused by disturbing the thermal and hydrodynamic development lengths. Moreover, these ribs also make an impact that increases the heat transfer by enlarging the heat transfer area. However, the ribs lead to the increment of the required pumping power in the meantime due to the increasing pressure loss in such systems. This aforementioned method is used for the heat exchangers, the solar collectors, the cooling of electronic devices. The investigation of the flow characteristics is very crucial to understand the heat transfer mechanism in the ducts for this reason. In the present paper, the flow characteristics between the plates have been experimentally re-searched. Particle image velocimetry system in the open water channel of Selcuk University Advanced Technology Research and Application Center has been used. The smooth plates have been taken as the reference model and used for the comparison with the plates having the rectangular cross-sectional ribs. The ribs with various heights of 0.1 ? h? = h/H ? 0.3 have been symmetrically placed on the internal surfaces of the plates via several spacing values of 0.5 ? S? = S/H ? 1 for varying Reynolds numbers as 10000 ? Re ? 20000. As a result, the flow characteristics have been given in terms of the contour graphics for velocity vector field, velocity components and vorticity.