Generalized air-side friction and heat transfer correlations for wavy-fin compact heat exchangers.
Abstract This work focuses on proposing generalized air-side thermal-hydraulic correlations for wavy-fin compact heat exchangers. The new correlations are modeled from experimental and numerical f- and j-factor data reported in the literature and presented in this paper. We have simulated twenty-one new geometries, using experimentally validated three-dimensional model implemented in ANSYS Fluent program, to obtain heat-transfer and fluid-flow characteristics of unreported geometries. Data of 50 geometries are used to propose new f and j correlations with an rms error of 9.23% and 9.90%, respectively. Testing and comparing the present correlations with those reported in the literature demonstrate that the present air-side f- and j-factor correlations are more accurate and generalized for regular wavy-fin compact heat exchangers.