A new heat transfer correlation for turbulent flow of air with variable properties in noncircular ducts

Turbulent flow and heat transfer of air with variable properties in a set of regular polygonal ducts and circular tube have been numerically simulated. All the ducts have the same hydraulic diameter as their characteristic lengths in the Reynolds number. The flow is modeled as three-dimensional (3D) and fully elliptic by using the finite volume method and the standard k-ε turbulence model. The results showed that the relatively strong secondary flow could be observed with variable properties fluid. For the regular polygonal ducts, the local heat transfer coefficient along circumferential direction is not uniform; there is an appreciable reduction in the corner region and the smaller the angle of the corner region, the more appreciable deterioration the corner region causes. The use of hydraulic diameter for regular polygonal ducts leads to unacceptably large errors in turbulent heat transfer determined from the circular tube correlations. Based on the simulation results, a correction factor is proposed to predict turbulent heat transfer in regular polygonal ducts.