Abstract
This paper evaluates an optimal airside thermal-hydraulic performance of compact heat exchangers. Seventy-five airside surfaces have been chosen, i.e. standard reference of Kays and London, to represent louver-fin, strip-fin, wavy-fin, plain-fin, pin-fin, finned circular tubes and finned flat tubes. A robust evaluation method is implemented by an estimation of the heat transfer rate per unit pumping power with and without considering the heat exchanger compactness. Experimental data of Colburn j-factor and Fanning friction factor (f) are used to estimate both the heat transfer rates and the friction power, respectively. The results demonstrate that strip-fin surface 1/10-27.03 shows an optimal heat transfer values per unit friction power when the compactness is taken into consideration. Nonetheless, pin-fin surface PF-4(F) shows an optimal heat transfer rate per pumping power when neglecting the importance of the compactness. The geometries having an optimal thermal-hydraulic performance for each airside type (with or without considering the compactness) are recommended as benchmarks to assess the performance of similar airside surfaces. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.