A Critical Review of the Prominent Method of Heat Transfer Enhancement for the Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchanger by Interrupted Fin Surface: The Vortex Generators Approach

Abstract

The performance of heat exchangers impacts industry investment, energy consumption, and pollution because the heat exchanger has been used in many industries. The use of vortex generators on the fin is the prominent method of heat transfer enhancement because the performance indexes of fins with vortex generators are greater than those of the fins without vortex generators. However, this method faces obstacles because the concepts and design instructions are still obscure. Therefore, this paper provides a summary of the publications about the use of vortex generators. The publications on the effects of traditional and alternative vortex generators that are combined with plain, wavy, and louver fins are summarized. The aim of this paper is to aggregate the publications concerned with the thermal performance and flow characteristics of the fin-and-tube heat exchanger with vortex generator using numerical and experimental investigations as the guideline for future studies.