09-09-2014, 02:12 PM
Helical coils are preferred over straight tubes for cooling and heating applications in various industries such as power generation, nuclear industry, process plant, refrigeration and food industry due to high heat and mass transfer coefficients, and space economy in terms of area per unit volume. Since the centrifugal forces experienced by the fluid acts to promote contact with the channel wall, thereby tending to insure good contact with the wall. The present work aims at the CFD analysis of flow of fluid through a helical coil. In this study, a three dimensional model has been developed to simulate the transient behavior of single phase and two phase flow hydrodynamic and heat transfer inside the helical coil using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method along the length and circumference at the wall. Optimum simulation parameters (such as grid density, boundary layer, time step size, meshing) were identified and studied. A number of studies reported in literature reveal that a 3-D geometry CFD simulation yield better results as compared to 2-D flow domain, half geometry, o