International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Heat transfer enhancement by pin elements

N. Sahiti, F. Durst *, A. Dewan
LSTM-Erlangen, Institute of Fluid Mechanics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg,
Cauerstrasse 4, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany

Received 16 November 2004; received in revised form 25 May 2005

Available online 22 August 2005

Abstract

Heat transfer enhancement is an active and important field of engineering research since increases in the effectiveness
of heat exchangers through suitable heat transfer augmentation techniques can result in considerable technical advan-
tages and savings of costs. Considerable enhancements were demonstrated in the present work by using small cylindri-
cal pins on surfaces of heat exchangers. A partly quantitative theoretical treatment of the proposed method is presented.
It uses simple relationships for the conductive and convective heat transfer to derive an equation that shows which
parameters permit the achievement of heat transfer enhancements. Experiments are reported that demonstrate the effec-
tiveness of the results of the proposed approach. It is shown that the suggested method of heat transfer enhancements is
much more effective than existing methods, since it results in an increase in heat transfer area (like fins) and also an
increase in the heat transfer coefficient.
Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Heat exchanger; Pin fins; Heat transfer enhancement

1. Introduction and aim of work ment have not changed over the years but, most re-
cently, high energy and material costs have resulted in
Heat exchangers are used in various industrial appli- increased efforts to design and produce more and more
cations and are devices that are installed to permit the efficient heat exchanger equipment. In connection with
transfer of thermal energy between two (or more) fluids this, investigations into heat transfer enhancements have
at different temperatures without having direct contact. attracted new interest including at Institute of Fluid
Parallel-flow, counter-flow and cross-flow heat exchang- Mechanics, Erlangen. Heat transfer increases have been
ers are in operation and their overall performance has studied experimentally and theoretically and first results
been treated in many text books, e.g., see [1,2]. The are reported in the present paper.
major challenges to the design of a heat exchanger are For heat transfer enhancements in heat exchangers,
to make it compact, i.e., to achieve a high heat transfer active and passive methods have been employed. For ac-
rate and, at the same time, to allow its operation with a tive methods, some external power is needed to achieve
small power loss. These aims of research and develop- the attempted heat transfer enhancement, usually from
a flowing fluid to a heat exchanger wall. If the power is
taken from the actual fluid flow, it is possible to drive with
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 9131 852 9501; fax: +49 this flow instabilities, e.g., see [3], to yield an increased
9131 852 9503. heat transfer coefficient. To increase the heat transfer
E-mail address: [email protected] (F. Durst). coefficient, a common passive method is to employ

0017-9310/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2005.07.001
 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747 4739

Nomenclature

q_ heat transfer per unit area Greek symbols

Q_ heat transfer q density
V_ volume flow rate u coverage ratio
A surface area D difference
D diameter of the outer tube
d diameter of the inner tube Subscripts
N number of pin rows h hydraulic diameter
Eu Euler number b bare plate
E specific power input (pumping power per a air and augmented heat transfer
unit bare area) s solid
h convective heat transfer coefficient w water
k thermal conductivity fr free part of the plate (not covered by pins)
l length of tube bp base of the pins
Nu Nusselt number i inner diameter
p pressure o outer diameter
Pr Prandtl number in inlet
Re Reynolds number out outlet
T temperature
U overall heat transfer coefficient
u mean flow velocity

turbulence promoters of different geometry, e.g., see possible to use a counter-flow heat exchanger in all prac-
[4,5]. To achieve both an increase in heat transfer coeffi- tical situations. Therefore, a common arrangement in
cient and a moderate increase in heat transfer area, flow practice is a heat exchanger with a cross-flow arrange-
inserts such as twisted tapes, wire coils or cross-bar grids ment and this is characterized by a better temperature
are used, e.g., see [4,5]. Recently, the employment of distribution compared with the parallel-flow heat ex-
dimples has been suggested, e.g., see [6], to increase the changer, but the temperature distribution in such a heat
effective heat transfer from surfaces. Extended surfaces exchanger is not as good as in the case of a counter-flow
characterized with high heat transfer coefficients and a arrangement.
substantial increase in heat transfer area provides appre- Both effective surface enhancement elements and the
ciable heat transfer enhancement compared with the all optimal flow arrangement were employed during the
above-mentioned passive techniques. Most recently, De- experimental investigation of the pin fin heat exchanger
wan et al. [7] presented a review of passive heat transfer described in the present work.
augmentation techniques. They mainly discussed the use
of twisted tapes and wire coils in laminar and turbulent
flow regimes. They also considered other passive tech- 2. Estimation of heat transfer enhancements
niques, such as ribs, fins and dimples, and showed that
the effectiveness of a particular type of technique de- First for some approximate theoretical considerations
pends on Reynolds number and other flow properties. of the heat transfer from a surface, the molecularly con-
While seeking heat transfer enhancement, apart from ducted heat from a plate without any heat transfer
the utilization of various surface enhancement elements, enhancement element (bare plate) can be given as
efforts have also been made to select an optimal flow

arrangement within the heat exchanger in order to ob- oT
q_ b ¼
k a ð1Þ
tain the maximum advantage for a given heat exchanger oy a;y¼0
 
configuration. It may be noted that in a counter-flow
where ka is the thermal conductivity of the air, oToy
arrangement of a heat exchanger, the outlets of fluid a;y¼0
streams lie at opposite ends and this enables the outlet is the temperature gradient at the air side of the wall–air
temperature of cold fluid to rise above the outlet temper- interface and q_ b is the heat transfer rate per unit area of
ature of the warm fluid. This is not possible in a parallel- bare plate.
flow arrangement, and hence as far as the heat transfer When elements for heat transfer augmentation are
rate is concerned, the counter-flow heat exchangers are placed on the surface to cover an area uAb, the area
superior to the parallel type [8]. Nevertheless, it is not for the heat transfer from the solid surface to the fluid
4740 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747

(air in the present paper) decreases to (1
u)Ab, where ratio of the base pin area and bare plate area (coverage
Ab denotes the surface area of the bare plate. Hence, to ratio).
estimate the heat transfer enhancement by augmentation In order to achieve a high heat transfer rate, one
elements, we may write should employ a large number of small elements with
a small coverage ratio u (about 5%), resulting in a sub-
q_ a ¼ q_ fr þ q_ bp


 stantially increased heat transfer area but without an
oT oT excessive pressure drop. Therefore Eq. (2) can be rewrit-
¼
ð1
uÞk a
uk s ð2Þ
oy a;y¼0 oy s;y¼0 ten in the following approximate form:



where q_ a is the augmented heat flux (Figs. 1 and 2), q_ fr is oT oT
q_ a 
k a
uk s ð3Þ
the heat flux at the interface between solid and fluid (air oy a;y¼0 oy s;y¼0
in the present paper), q_ bp is the heat flux through the
base area of pin, ka and ks is the thermal conductivity Hence, the ratio of total heat flux from a base plate with
  pins and the bare base plate takes the form
of air and solid material, respectively, and oT ,  
  oy
a;y¼0 oT
oT q_ a k s oy s;y¼0
are the temperature gradients at the interface
oy
s;y¼0 1þu   ð4Þ
between the free area and air and between the base plate q_ b k a oT
oy
a;y¼0
and base area of pin fin, respectively, and u denotes the
In order to obtain a possible large value of the ratio,
apart from a small coverage ratio one needs to chose a
y fin which has a large heat transfer surface area and a
large heat transfer coefficient. Closely spaced pins with
a small diameter and large length to diameter ratio have
d such features. If heat transfers from pin and flat surface
are represented in terms of heat transfer coefficients for
the pin and flat surface and respective temperature differ-
ences, one can prove that for fluid velocities of the order
of 2 m/s and the pin height to pin diameter ratio of the
order of 15, the ratio of the two gradients in Eq. (4)
becomes approximately 0.1. Further, by assuming the
material of the pin to be copper with ks = 380 W/m K
and with thermal conductivity of air ka = 0.026 W/m K
h

one can show that the following heat transfer ratio

results:
q_ a
 70 ð5Þ
q_ b
This ratio indicates that it is possible, in principle, to in-
x crease the heat transfer of a flat surface by a factor of
Fig. 1. Heat transfer area covered by pins. about 70 by placing pin-type elements on to it. Increases
of this kind are not achievable by any other means or
only by excessive increases in the pressure loss of the
y fluid flow passing through the heat enhancement ele-
ments. The large increase achievable with pin-type heat
u transfer enhancement elements encouraged the authors
to carry out the experimental investigations described
below using a counter-flow pipe heat exchanger.

. . 3. Experimental investigations
qbp qfr

x 3.1. Heat exchanger and test rig

. The experimental investigations were aimed at dem-

qa
onstrating that heat exchanger surfaces can be built with
Fig. 2. Heat fluxes from the free and pin base area. pin-type enhancement elements that permit the surface
 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747 4741

heat transfer to be enhanced by a factor of about 70, as ployed. The warm water flow rates were measured with
estimated above. To carry out the experiments, a coun- a standard water supply flow meter manufactured by
ter-flow heat exchanger was chosen, embracing two axis- Minol Messtechnik. Temperature changes on the cold
aligned pipes, the inner one of copper and the outer one fluid side (air side) were recorded by PT100 resistance
of stainless steel. Around the inner pipe a copper wire thermometers manufactured by OMEGA Newport with
mesh providing pin-like fins with diameter 0.7 mm and a perforated coating. On the water side the temperature
length 28.2 mm was wrapped (Fig. 3). The wires were ar- was measured by the PT100 resistance thermometers but
ranged in a somewhat staggered way and had a mean with a normal coating.
distance of 3 mm in the stream-wise direction and To avoid heat losses from the wire mesh into the sur-
6.5 mm in the span-wise direction, measured in a mean roundings and to avoid erroneous readings of tempera-
annular diameter of 70.8 mm. This double-pipe heat ex- tures at the inlet and outlet of air due to radiation
changer was mounted in a test rig consisting of an open- and convection from the bands of the inner copper
end wind tunnel as sketched in Fig. 4. The wind tunnel, pipe, the relevant parts were insulated using a mineral
set according to DIN norms, was able to provide a flow fibre mat with thermal conductivity k = 0.1 W/m K
rate up to 8 m3/s. The various flow rates of air for the (Fig. 5). The sequential readings of four PT100 ther-
experiments were measured by using a U-tube manome- mometers used during the experimentation were taken
ter attached to the wind channel. from a reading device with a display and a channel
To obtain warm fluid for obtaining a certain heat switching unit. In order to obtain high heat transfer
flux, a standard instantaneous water heater was em- rates, the heat exchanger was run in the counter-current
mode.

3.2. Experimental procedure and data reduction

A simple way to measure the flow rate of air in the

present test facility is by reading the pressure difference
at the inlet nozzle and converting it into the mean nozzle
inlet velocity. However, this technique could not be
applied because of small pressure differences corres-
ponding to the low flow rates considered. Therefore,
we used a U-tube manometer connected to the channel
wall, which was previously calibrated using a Pitot
probe. The velocity profile obtained by the use of Pitot
tube was used for the determination of the mean velocity
in the tube cross-section and volume flow rate. For each
flow rate a reading of the difference in the U-tube
manometer was made to obtain a calibration curve.
To cover a wide range of conditions relevant to heat
exchangers, the measurements were taken at 15 flow
Fig. 3. Core part of the pin fin heat exchanger. rates of air corresponding to a water flow rate of

5000
Wind channel
Pin fin heat See Fig. 5
exchanger
O1900

Fan Warm water

supply device
Inlet nozzle
U-Manometer Temperature reading
device

Fig. 4. Schematic of the pin fin heat exchanger measurement setup.

4742 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747

1300
920

25

159
149
99
25
a
b c d
e
33.3
62 42.6

Fig. 5. Geometry of the pin fin heat exchanger (dimensions in mm): (a) cold air; (b) insulation (air-side); (c) wire-like pin fins;
(d) insulation (water-side); (e) hot water.

3 l/min. Each experiment was repeated three times to ðT w out
T a in Þ
ðT w in
T a out Þ

DT lm ¼   ð7Þ
obtain a good representative average value. During the ln TT ww out
T a in
in
T a out
measurements the flow rates of air were chosen in steps
of 20 mm of water column of the U-tube. Thus a flow The heat flux in Eq. (6) was calculated using the
range from 0.016 to 0.062 m3/s could be obtained. Ow- enthalpy difference on the water side, because parameters
ing to the heat introduced by the fan, the inlet tempera- were measured accurately on the water side
ture of the air varied between 19 and 22.5 °C. Higher
inlet temperatures were recorded at higher flow rates Q_ ¼ qw cpw V_ w ðT w in
T w out Þ ð8Þ
owing to higher heat losses from the fan motor. At the where qw, cp and V_ w are the density, thermal capacity
outlet of heat exchanger, air temperatures between 64 and volume flow rate of the water, respectively.
and 51 °C were observed. The inlet water temperature By knowing the overall heat transfer coefficient, one
was around 76.7 °C with a variation of less than can derive the heat transfer coefficient on the air side
0.65%, whereas the outlet water temperature reached by applying the following expression:
values between 69 and 73 °C.

1
1 do do do
Pressure drop measurements were carried out under ha ¼

ln ð9Þ
isothermal conditions [9] to avoid the fluid property U hw d i 2k c d i
changes due to temperature variations in the heat ex- where di and do denote the inner and outer diameters of
changer. The pressure drop in the heat exchanger corre- the inner heat exchanger tube and hw represents the heat
sponding to the flow rates was measured by taking static transfer coefficient on the water side.
pressure readings 5d in front of the heat exchanger on a There are well-established equations derived empiri-
differential manometer manufactured by Novodirect. cally for the turbulent flow regime or analytically for
The static pressure on the heat exchanger outlet was the laminar flow regime describing the heat transfer on
considered to be same as the ambient pressure, since the water side [2,8,10]. However, during the present
the heat exchanger during the pressure measurement experiments it was found that the mean Reynolds num-
procedure was kept at the end of the pipe. ber Re  4757 corresponds to the transition region.
In order to obtain the heat transfer coefficient on Therefore, most expressions reported in the literature
the air side, one needs to know the overall heat trans- would fail to provide physically meaningful values for
fer coefficient, which, considering the heat exchanger the heat transfer coefficient in the inner tube of the heat
as an adiabatic system, can be calculated by the exchanger. An appropriate equation for Nuw on the
expression water side was found to be the following:
Q_ Nu ¼ 0.036Re0:8 Pr1=3 ðd =lÞ0.055
w i ð10Þ
U¼ ð6Þ
A  DT lm
where l represents the length of the inner tube (920 mm
where A is the heat transfer area. In the present experi- in the present case). Eq. (10) proposes a Nusselt number
ments A represents the outside surface area of the inner for developing turbulent flows [10] and it also provides
tube with do = 42.6 mm. The logarithmic mean temper- accurate results for the transition region of the flow in
ature difference in the upper equation is calculated by the inner tube of the present work. Obviously the inlet
the expression conditions of the water flow into the heat exchanger
 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747 4743

section (such as sharp bends) cause an early transition of Table 1

the laminar flow into turbulent flow. Uncertainty of the individual sources
The heat transfer coefficient on the water side (Eq. (9)) Variable Symbol Uncertainty (%)
was derived based on the Nusselt number using the Inner diameter of outside tube Di 0.1
following expression: Outer diameter of inside tube do 0.2
k w Nuw Inner diameter of inside tube di 0.3
hw ¼ ð11Þ Difference pressure drop Dp (1.6–4.6)
di (Digital manometer)
Difference pressure drop Dp (3.2–8.9)
where kw denotes the thermal conductivity of water.
(U-tube manometer)
The above-described procedure was applied to the Water flow rate Vw 2.0
derivation of the heat transfer coefficient on the air side Inlet air temperature ta in 0.9
by taking into account variation in fluid properties due Outlet air temperature ta out 0.4
to the temperature variation. All fluid properties were Inlet water temperature tw in 0.3
taken from the VDI Wärmeatlas [11]. The heat transfer Outlet water temperature tw out 0.3
results were presented in the dimensionless form by using
Nusselt number on the air side calculated as follows:
ha Dh l fu2
Nua ¼ ð12Þ Dp ¼ q ð15Þ
ka Dh 2

where Dh = Di
do represents the hydraulic diameter of where the friction factor f is defined based on the
ring space occupied by pins and Di denotes the inner Haaland equation [12]
"
1.11 #
2
diameter of the outer pipe. The same hydraulic diameter k 6.9
was used for the calculation of the Reynolds number on f ¼
1.8 log þ ð16Þ
3.7Dh Re
the air side.
The pressure drop Dp, which in addition to friction where k is the pipe wall roughness (=0.0015 mm).
and form drag pressure losses includes the entrance
and exit losses, was expressed as a function of the flow 3.3. Uncertainty analysis
rate in the dimensionless form by using the Euler
number The uncertainty analysis was performed by using the
2Dp method of Kline and McClintock [13]. By this method
Eu ¼ ð13Þ the uncertainty of a variable R which is a function of
qa u2a N
independent variables x1, x2, . . . , xn, can be estimated
where qa represents the mean air density, ua the mean air by taking root-sum-square of the contributions of indi-
velocity and N the number of pin rows in the streamwise vidual variables. The individual uncertainties of different
direction. variables measured in the present work are provided in
For comparison purposes, heat transfer and pressure Table 1. The effects of individual variables resulted in
drop estimations were also made for a smooth double- the following uncertainties for the dimensionless vari-
pipe heat exchanger, in the counter-flow arrangement, ables measured in the present work: Re = (3.2–10)%,
with the same geometric characteristics as those given Nu = (16–21.1)%, and Eu = (6.6–20.5)%.
in Fig. 5. The Nusselt number for the convective heat
transfer in the air flowing through the smooth annular
space was derived based on the following equation 4. Discussion of results
(VDI Wärmeatlas [11]):


0.16 One objective of the present experiments was to dem-
do ðn=8ÞRePr onstrate that an enhancement of the heat transfer rate
Nu ¼ 0.86 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Di 1 þ 12.7 n=8ðPr2=3
1Þ by an increase in fluid flow velocity (and thus resulting
"
2=3 # in flow turbulence) is not an effective method since the
Dh heat flux varies with the velocity approximately as
 1þ ð14Þ
l Q_  u0.5 whereas the pressure drop varies as Dp  u2.
Thus due to an increase in velocity and hence Reynolds
where n = (1.8 log Re
1.5)
2 and Dh = hydraulic diam- number, the pressure losses would rise faster than the
eter of the annular space. rise of the heat flux. In order to bring out the relatively
For the determination of the pressure drop in the weak influence of the fluid velocity on the heat transfer
smooth double-pipe heat exchanger, the following equa- rate, Nu for the smooth double pipe with the same
tion was used: dimensions as that of the present heat exchanger is also
4744 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747

10000

1000
Nu

100

10 pin fin heat exchanger

smooth pipe heat exchanger
1
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000
Re

Fig. 6. Nu as a function of Re for pin fin heat exchanger and a smooth pipe heat exchanger.

presented in Fig. 6. The results clearly show the advan- to give the pressure drop results in term of pressure loss
tage of using pin fins to increase Nu. It is important to coefficient or Euler number for tube row, since for such
note that increased flow velocities result in 2–3 times flows the pressure drop varies linearly with number of
higher Nu, whereas, by employing the pins it is possible pin rows crossed by the fluid.
to obtain 65–105 times higher values of Nu compared The non-dimensional form of the data presented in
with those for the smooth pipe heat exchanger. Fig. 7 enables one to obtain the pressure drop for geo-
However, Nu is not the only parameter to assess the metrically similar heat exchangers but with different
performance of a heat exchanger. Rather in the design lengths and hence different numbers of pin rows. We
procedure particular care should be given to the pressure emphasise again that the plotted Eu includes the pres-
losses as these are directly proportional to the operating sure drop introduced due to the pins (the major part
costs. It may happen that owing to high pressure losses of the pressure drop) in addition to the pressure drop
the expenditure on mechanical pumping power is as associated with the entrance and exit effects in the heat
much as the enhancement in heat transfer rate of a heat exchanger.
exchanger. Pressure drop in general in all heat exchang- The dimensionless form of the presentation of heat
ers is approximately proportional to q
2 for laminar or transfer results is suitable for scaling purposes, e.g., if
turbulent flow conditions [14]. Therefore, the pressure one needs to apply results from a small test heat exchan-
drop in a heat exchanger with one or both working flu- ger to a real heat exchanger with larger dimensions but
ids as a gas is usually critical and thus the pressure drop within the requirements of similarity analysis. However,
on the air side was only measured in the present exper- in a practical application, this form of presentation is
iments. It was ensured that during the pressure drop not useful, since for such applications one primarily
measurements no heat transfer took place, in order to needs to know heat transfer rates for a given pressure
prevent the effect of changing fluid properties. For the drop or vice versa. Moreover, it is often necessary to
flow over tube banks or over pin fins, it is convenient choose the most effective fins for the heat transfer

1
Eu

0.1
5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000
Re

Fig. 7. Eu and Re correlation for the investigated heat exchanger.

 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747 4745

10000

Heat Transfer Coefficient h

Re=7316 Re=32705

1000

(W/m2K)
100

10 PIN fin heat exchanger

Smooth pipe heat exchanger
1
0 1 10 100 1000 10000
Specific Power Input E (W/m2)

Fig. 8. Heat transfer coefficient vs. power input of the investigated heat exchanger.

enhancement taking into account both thermal and coefficients behave similarly to the previously compared
pressure drop characteristics. The way of presenting a Nu (Fig. 6) with a small difference related to the changes
huge amount of experimental data from heat exchanger in the air properties for the smooth and pin fin heat
tests is very important and this will be discussed in more exchangers.
detail in a forthcoming publication. Nevertheless, heat
transfer and pressure data for both the present pin fin
and smooth pipe heat exchangers are presented in 5. Conclusions, final remarks and outlook
Fig. 8 in the form of the heat transfer coefficient (heat
transfer per unit bare area and unit temperature Heat exchangers are usually characterized according
difference) as a function of the specific power input to their method of operation, i.e., parallel-flow, coun-
(pumping power per unit bare area). We believe that this ter-flow or cross-flow arrangement. Further consider-
form of presentation of data provides a very simple and ations include the elements that are used to increase
effective way to select the best performing heat transfer the heat transfer rate in a particular heat exchanger. Sev-
surface. eral heat transfer enhancement elements, such as ribs,
The data in Fig. 8 allow the comparison of the per- twisted tapes, wire coils, cross-bar grids and dimples,
formance of different heat transfer surfaces assuming have been suggested in the literature. However, such
the same fin height and same fin material. As the heat kinds of elements are usually not very efficient at heat
transfer and power input are based on the bare tube transfer enhancement since they usually increase the
area, no estimation of convective heat transfer area heat transfer coefficient but the heat transfer area basi-
and hydraulic diameter of the flow passage is required cally remains constant. Much higher values of the heat
in order to compare the surfaces. This is of practical transfer rates can be obtained by applying fins of differ-
interest as the hydraulic diameter of the flow passage ent geometry, such as strip, corrugated or louver fins,
is not uniquely defined and the procedures for the esti- since by these elements one can obtain a larger heat
mation of heat transfer area, such as in a compact heat transfer coefficient and larger heat transfer area com-
exchanger may be cumbersome. It may be noted that the pared with bare plates and plates with enhancement ele-
influence of both of these parameters as well as other ments mentioned above. High performance of the wavy,
factors, such as fin efficiency and fin thickness, is already strip or louvered fins has been investigated and opti-
lumped into h and E. As the values of the parameters for mized for a long time, resulting in very compact heat
the heat exchangers under comparison differ consider- exchangers, particularly in thermal power plants, air
ably, the only way to present them in the same figure conditioning units and the automobile industry. How-
is to use a logarithmic scale. Fig. 8 allows a comparison ever, we consider that these enhancement elements have
of heat transfer rates for the same bare area and temper- reached their limit and no further improvement in heat
ature difference vs. power input for both heat exchang- exchanger performance seems possible. Hence enhance-
ers. It may be noted that it is not practical from Fig. 8 ment of heat transfer continues to be a challenging prob-
to compare the heat transfer coefficients of the two heat lem in different industrial fields. Therefore, an attempt to
exchangers for the same value of Re. However, to avoid improve the performance of heat exchangers by using
the confusion, we have presented the lines of the lowest pin fins was undertaken in the present work. We con-
and the highest Re, based on which one can also com- sider that properly distributed pins with an optimal
pare the heat transfer coefficients of both heat exchang- height to diameter ratio will further substantially
ers. Such a comparison shows that the heat transfer improve heat exchanger performance as pin fins are
4746 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747

10000

h(W/m2K) 1000

100
PIN FIN (PF-4) Strip Fin
Plane Fin Wavy Fin
Louvered 3_8-8.7 LSTM-PIN FIN
PIN FIN (PF-3) Louvered 3_16-11.1
10
1 10 100 1000 10000
2
E(W/m )

Fig. 9. Comparison of heat transfer coefficient of the investigated pin heat exchanger with some other compact heat exchanger surfaces
found in the literature.

characterized with higher heat transfer than strip or lou- achieved if the ratio of pin height to pin diameter is of
vered fins. In spite of generally higher pressure drop of order of 15.
the flow through the pins compared with fins, the form The authors believe that the present work will serve
of presentation of heat exchanger data applied within as the basis of further work concerning the optimization
the present work enables one to prove that for the same of pin fin geometry for application in air heat exchangers
pumping power properly arranged pin fins are able to and it will encourage the development of simple and
transfer higher heat rates than all other common fin cheap procedures to build pin fin heat exchangers for
geometries. industrial applications.
An attempt to show the trend of the relative perfor-
mance of the pin fin heat exchanger surface and other
surface geometries was made by using the data for some References
compact heat exchanger surfaces given in Kays and
London [15]. Although the compared heat exchangers [1] R.L. Webb, Principles of Enhanced Heat Transfer, John
are of different geometries, the curves exemplify the Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994.
advantages of such a kind of presentation of heat ex- [2] F. Incropera, D. DeWitt, Introduction to Heat Transfer,
changer data, e.g., provided there is similar heat exchan- fourth ed., John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002.
ger geometry, it allows a direct comparison of heat [3] M. Greiner, P.F. Fischer, H.M. Tufo, Two-dimensional
fluxes per unit bare area and unit temperature difference simulations of enhanced heat transfer in an intermittently
of all heat exchanger surfaces, taking into account the grooved channel, Trans. ASME J. Heat Transfer 124
power input for the same unit bare area. Furthermore, (2002) 538–545.
[4] A.E. Bergles, Techniques to augment heat transfer, in:
Fig. 9 shows that not all modes of pin fin arrangement
W.M. Rosenhow, J.P. Hartnett, E.N. Ganic (Eds.),
perform better than other heat exchanger surfaces. A Handbook of Heat Transfer Applications, McGraw-Hill,
careful selection of the pin fin arrangement and the ratio New York, 1985 (Chapter 3).
of pin height to pin diameter is required to obtain a [5] A.E. Bergles, The imperative to enhance heat transfer, in:
high-performance pin fin heat exchanger surface. A pin S. Kakac, A.E. Bergles, F. Mayinger, Yüncü (Eds.), Heat
arrangement is considered optimal if the associated pres- Transfer Enhancement of Heat Exchangers, Kluwer Aca-
sure drop does not exceed the benefits of enhanced heat demic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1998.
transfer rate resulting from high population of the base [6] L. Zhihua, J.H. Davidson, S.C. Mantell, Heat trans-
plate with pins. Otherwise the pin to height diameter ra- fer enhancement using shaped polymer tubes: fin analysis,
tio influences the pin efficiency and the heat transfer rate Trans. ASME J. Heat Transfer 126 (2004) 211–
218.
of pins. A detailed evaluation of these two parameters is
[7] A. Dewan, P. Mahanta, K.S. Raju, P. Suresh Kumar, A
quite complicated owing to their dependence on several review of passive heat transfer augmentation techniques,
other factors and their opposite behavior. Such evalua- Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng.: Part A J. Power Energy 218 (2004)
tion is beyond the scope of the present work. How- 509–527.
ever, it is known that for pin fins a good compromise [8] H. Baehr, K. Stephan, Wärme- und Stoffübertragung-
between the pin efficiency and pin heat transfer rate is fourth, fourth ed., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004.
 N. Sahiti et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 48 (2005) 4738–4747 4747

[9] W.M. Kays, A.L. London, Heat-transfer and flow-friction [13] S.J. Kline, F.A. McClintock, Describing uncertainties
characteristics of some compact heat-exchanger surfaces— in single-sample experiments, Mech. Eng. 75 (1953)
Part I, Trans. ASME 72 (1950) 1075–1085. 3–8.
[10] J.P. Holman, Heat Transfer, eighth ed., McGraw-Hill, [14] R. Shah, D. Sekulic, Fundamentals of Heat Exchanger
New York, 1999. Design, Wiley & Sons, New York, 2003.
[11] V.D.I. Wärmeatlas, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2002. [15] W.M. Kays, A.L. London, Compact Heat Exchangers,
[12] F.M. White, Fluid Mechanics, fourth ed., McGraw-Hill, third Reprinted ed., Krieger Publishing Company, FL,
New York, 1999. USA, 1998.