Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Heat Transfer Characteristics for Impinging Swirl Flow

Abstract

This paper reports experimental and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling studies to investigate the effect of the swirl intensity on the heat transfer characteristics of conventional and swirl impingement air jets at a constant nozzle-to-plate distance ( L = 2 D ). The experiments were performed using classical twisted tape inserts in a nozzle jet with three twist ratios ( y = 2.93, 3.91, and 4.89) and Reynolds numbers that varied from 4000 to 16000. The results indicate that the radial uniformity of Nusselt number (Nu) of swirl impingement air jets (SIJ) depended on the values of the swirl intensity and the air Reynolds number. The results also revealed that the SIJ that was fitted with an insert of y = 4.89, which corresponds to the swirl number Sw = 0.671, provided much more uniform local heat transfer distribution on the surface. The CFD-predicted results help to explain the experimental measurements in terms of the turbulence intensity. Furthermore, the predicted and measured local Nusselt numbers were consistent with each other.