Experimental estimation of the local heat-transfer coefficient in coiled tubes in turbulent flow regime

Wall curvature is a popular heat transfer enhancement technique since it gives origin to the centrifugal force in the fluid: this phenomenon promotes local maxima in the velocity distribution that locally increase the temperature gradients at the wall by enhancing the heat transfer both in the laminar and in the turbulent flow regime. This geometry produces an asymmetrical distribution of the velocity field over the cross-section of the tube which lead to a significant variation in the convective heat-transfer coefficient along the circumferential angular coordinate: it presents higher values at the outer bend side of the wall surface than at the inner bend side. Although the irregular distribution of the heat transfer coefficient may be critical in some industrial applications, most of the authors did not investigate this aspect, mainly due to the practical difficulty of measuring heat flux on internal wall surface of a pipe. In the present investigation the local convective heat-transfer coefficient is experimentally estimated at the fluid-wall interface in coiled tubes when turbulent flow regime occurs; in particular, temperature distribution maps on the external coil wall are employed as input data of the inverse heat conduction problem in the wall and a solution approach based on the Tikhonov regularisation is implemented. The results, obtained with water as working fluid, are focused on the fully developed region in the turbulent flow regime in the Reynolds number range of 5000 to 12000.