Heat Transfer Enhancement by Using Different Types of Inserts

Heat transfer enhancement has been always a significantly interesting topic in order to develop high efficient, low cost, light weight, and small heat exchangers. The energy cost and environmental issue are also encouraging researchers to achieve better performance than the existing designs. Two of the most effective ways to achieve higher heat transfer rate in heat exchangers are using different kinds of inserts and modifying the heat exchanger tubes. There are different kinds of inserts employed in the heat exchanger tubes such as helical/twisted tapes, coiled wires, ribs/fins/baffles, and winglets. This paper presents an overview about the early studies on the improvement of the performance of thermal systems by using different kinds of inserts. Louvered strip insert had better function in backward flow compared to forward one. Modifying the shape of twisted tapes led to a higher efficiency in most of the cases excpet for perforated twisted tape and notched twisted tape. Combination of various inserts and tube with artificial roughness provided promising results. In case of using various propeller types, heat transfer enhancement was dependent on higher number of blades and blade angle and lower pitch ratio.