Some Aspects of Plate Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchangers: With and Without Louvers

The paper presents the results of an experimental study on the air-side performance for two-specific louver fin patterns and their plain fin counterpart. The corresponding longitudinal tube pitches for the test samples were 19.05 and 22 mm, and the nominal tube diameter for the test samples is 9.52 mm. For plain fin pattern, the effect of longitudinal tube pitch on the air-side performance is negligible whereas the heat transfer performance increases with decrease of fin pitch. For louver fin geometry, both longitudinal tube pitch and fin pitch shows very small effect on the heat transfer performance. However, it is found that the heat transfer coefficients for Fp = 1.78 mm are approximately 0 ∼ 10% higher than those of Fp = 1.21 mm and Fp = 2.42 mm. In addition, compared with P1 = 19.05 mm, significant increase of friction factors were observed for the louver fin pattern.