Numerical investigation of fouling on cross-flow heat exchanger tubes with conjugated heat transfer approach

Although fouling on heat exchanger tubes is extensively investigated, due to the lack of energy resources, the effects of fouling on heat exchangers is still an important area of study and gaining more and more attention every day. In this study we investigated the effects of fouling on heat transfer and flow structures numerically for cross-flow heat exchanger tube geometry. The distributions of temperature, heat transfer coefficient and heat flux at the surface of fouling were obtained for single and double layer fouling cases. In the analysis, Reynolds number and the blockage ratio were fixed to 100 and 0.1 respectively. We used ANSYS software in our analyses and compared some of our results with the literature. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.