Thermo-Hydraulic Evaluation of Isothermally Heated Bluff Bodies with Different Shapes

The present research aims to determine the single-phase heat transfer and pressure drop across the heating tube (bluff body) of different configurations using the ANSYS-2020R2 fluent module in the 2D computational domain. The water flows across the tube with a velocity ranging from 0.01 to 0.05 m/s. The heat transfer coefficient (HTC) is found to decrement from horizontal ellipse to semicircle to hexagon to vertical ellipse to inverted triangle to circular, to triangle. The maximum enhancement in HTC, about 19%, is found for horizontal ellipse than that of circular. The horizontal ellipse has the largest pressure drop among all the bluff bodies, followed by the triangle, inverted triangle, rotated hexagon, horizontal semicircle, vertical semicircle, hexagon, circle, and vertical ellipse. The vertical ellipse provides a 21% lesser pressure drop among all bluff bodies than circular. The vertical ellipse exhibits a higher heat transfer coefficient to lower pressure drop ratio, followed by vertical semicircle, hexagon, circle, inverted triangle, rotated hexagon, horizontal semicircle, horizontal ellipse, and triangle. The vertical semicircle has the maximum enhancement ratio, and minimal is found in the triangle case. The highest PDR is found in the case of the horizontal ellipse, whereas the lowest value is obtained for the horizontal semicircle.