International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

A numerical study on the air-side heat transfer of perforated finned-tube

heat exchangers with large fin pitches
Xiaoqin Liu, Jianlin Yu , Gang Yan
Department of Refrigeration & Cryogenic Engineering, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: For a finned-tube heat exchangers (FHEXs) with large fin pitches, the enhancement of air-side heat trans-
Received 19 January 2016 fer performance by using perforated fins has been numerically investigated in this paper. The effects of
Accepted 24 April 2016 the perforation size and number on the air-side j factor and heat transfer rates of the FHEX are analyzed
Available online 7 May 2016
in detail at different large fin pitches. Numerical simulation results indicate that an optimal perforation
design can be obtained to realize maximum increase in the j factor for the perforated FHEX compared
Keywords: with those of the plate FHEX without perforations. It is also found that the enhancement of the j factor
Finned-tube heat exchanger
increases with the rising air-side Reynolds number from 750 to 2350. For the perforated FHEX with fin
Large fin pitch
Numerical study
pitch of 10.0 mm, the j factor increases by 0.3% at Re = 750 and 8.1% at Re = 2350, respectively, with
Perforation the optimal perforation design. In addition, the results present that the j factor increase of the perforated
FHEX compared with that of the plain FHEX is more obvious at smaller fin pitches. When the fin pitch
varies from 20.0 mm to 7.5 mm, the increase in the j factor varies from 2.7% to 9.2% at Re = 2350.
However, the total heat transfer surfaces of the perforated FHEX are reduced by perforations, its heat
transfer rates may be decreased. The results show that the air-side heat transfer rate is reduced by
6.3% at Re = 750 when the fin pitch is 7.5 mm. For this case, two methods are further proposed to com-
pensate total surfaces for the perforated FHEX in order to obtain higher air-side j factor while ensuring
identical heat transfer rate.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction finned-tube heat exchangers. Wongwises and Wang [10] proposed

Finned-tube heat exchangers (FHEXs) are widely applied in the
areas of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration.
Since majority of the thermal resistance of FHEXs is on the air side,
improving air side fin configuration and enhancing its heat transfer
is the most effective way to improve the performance of the heat
exchangers. Various studies have been conducted on the fin pat-
terns (such as plate, louver, convex-louver, and wavy), fin geome-
tries (such as fin pitches and fin height) and other geometrical
parameters to improve the air-side thermal and flow performances
of FHEXs. The effects of fin pitch on the thermal performances of
finned-tube heat exchangers were extensively investigated with
small fin pitch (Fp < 7.0 mm) [16]. The influences of the fin geom-
etry changes, except fin spacing and fin pitch, on the heat transfer
and pressure drop of a finned-tube heat exchanger were numeri-
cally investigated by Erek et al. [7]. Furthermore, Wang et al.
[8,9] developed one of the most complete and accurate sets of cor-
relations for the air side heat transfer and pressure drop of plain
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 82668738; fax: +86 29 82668725.
E-mail address: yujl@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (J. Yu).
a tube-by-tube reduction method to analyze the performance of
plain fin-and-tube heat exchangers under dehumidifying condi-
tions and proposed a correlation for the heat exchangers with dif-
ferent fin thickness, fin pitch and other fin geometry.
Besides the configuration of fin and tube geometry parameters,
many attempts have been also made to design optimized fins pat-
tern to improve the thermal performance of finned-tube heat
exchangers. One of the very popular optimized fins is the inter-
rupted surface. Interrupted surfaces can provide high average heat
transfer coefficient owing to periodical renewal of the boundary
layer development [1117]. Among the new designed fins, wavy
and louvered fin have been investigated extensively. Percic et al.
[18] compared the fluid flow and heat exchange on the air side
between the finned-tube heat exchanger with flat and louvered
fins at fin pitches of 2.06 mm and found that the louvered heat
exchanger shows significantly better heat transfer characteristics
than the flat heat exchangers. In addition, longitudinal vortex gen-
eration was a proven and effective technique for thinning the ther-
mal boundary layer and enhancing heat transfer. Air-side heat
transfer enhancement of a refrigerator evaporator with fin spacing
of 8.47 mm using vortex generation was experimentally measured

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2016.04.081
0017-9310/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
200 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207
Nomenclature
Af fin surface area (m2)
A0 total surface area (m2)
c specific heat (J kg
1 K
1)
Do tube outside diameter (mm)
do perforation diameter (mm)
F friction factor
Fp fin pitch (mm)
h0 air side heat transfer coefficient (W m
2 K
1)
j Colburn factor
L the fin length (m)
DP the pressure drop of the inlet and outlet air (Pa)
PT transverse pitch (mm)
PL longitudinal pitch (mm)
Nu Nusselt number
Pr fluid Prandtl number
Q heat transfer rate (W)
qm mass flow rate (kg s
1)
Re Reynolds number
under frosting conditions by Sommers and Jacobi [19]. For air-side
Reynolds numbers between 500 and 1300, the air-side thermal
resistance was reduced by 3542% with using the vortex genera-
tion. Wu and Tao [20] showed that delta winglet pairs can bring
about a further heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop
decrease through the careful arrangement of the location, size
and attack angle of delta winglet pairs.
Several researchers reported that perforated surfaces attributed
the improvement to the restarting of the thermal boundary layer
after each interruption and thus the increase in convection heat
transfer coefficient. Lee and Jung et al. [21] investigated the effect
of perforated circular finned-tube (PCFT) on the convective heat
transfer performance of air-cooled heat exchangers. The experi-
mental results showed that the air-side convective heat transfer
coefficients can be increased by 3.55% and 3.31% for 2-hole and
4-hole PCFT cases, respectively, compared with the plain CFT.
Recently, Sangtarash and Shokuhmand [22] developed numerical
and experimental models to investigate the effect of adding an
in-line and staggered arrangement of dimples and perforated dim-
ples to multilouvered fins on the heat transfer and the pressure
drop of the air flow through a multilouvered fin bank. The results
demonstrated that adding dimples on the louver surface increases
the j factor and the f factor. Likewise, adding perforation to the
dimples resulted in the same increase. Yakar and Karabacak [23]
experimentally investigated the thermal performance of
perforated heat exchangers with circular fins. They found a critical
Reynolds number and the Nusselt numbers on the finned heater of
perforated state were 12% higher than that of the imperforate
finned state when the Re numbers was above the critical value.
The finned-tube evaporators used in no-frost household
refrigerator-freezers are different from the conventional FHEXs
[24]. To avoid flow obstruction due to frost formation on the air-
side heat transfer surface, fin spacing may be non-uniform along
the coil and is significantly larger (0.40.8 fins per cm) than those
in conventional tube-fin exchangers. In addition, the frontal (or
face) area is smaller and the evaporator length is larger than other
heat exchanger geometries. Another feature of no-frost evapora-
tors is that its air flow rate tends to be lower than that in conven-
tional tube-fin heat exchangers. A number of studies have also
been conducted on the effect of their fin and tube geometries.
Kim and Kim [2527] conducted several experiments on the air-
side heat transfer characteristics of flat plate finned-tube heat
exchangers with large fin pitches. The heat exchangers tested were
Tin air inlet temperature (K)
Tout air outlet temperature (K)
Tw tube wall temperature (K)
UA thermal conductance (W K
1)
um the mean air velocity (m s
1)
umax air velocity through the minimum free flow area (m s
1)
Greek symbols
e turbulent dissipation rate (m2 s
3)
eh effectiveness of heat exchanger
k turbulent Kinetic energy (m2 s
2)
g fin efficiency
g0 fin effectiveness
q air density (kg/m3)
k thermal conductivity (W m
1 K
1)
with various fin pitches, number of tube rows, fin alignment, tube
alignment and vertical fin space. They found that the heat exchang-
ers with discrete fin type performance better than those with con-
tinuous fin type. Moreover, they developed two correlations for the
j factor for the inline and the staggered tube alignment with the
discrete fin type under dry condition, respectively [26], and two
empirical correlations for predicting the j factor under frosting con-
ditions for the inline and the staggered tube alignment with the
continuous fin type [27], respectively. Yang and Lee et al. [28]
researched the optimal fin spacing for a fin-tube heat exchanger
with 2 columns and 8 rows for a household refrigerator under
frosting conditions through the response surface and Taguchi
methods. The separate optimum design of the heat exchanger
maximizing the average heat transfer rate was obtained using
the response surface method and Taguchi method, respectively.
It can be seen from previous literatures [918,2022] that opti-
mized fins with the interrupted surface are usually applied for
FHEXs with small fin pitches and without frosting. There is little
research on the use of fins with the interrupted surface in FHEXs
with large fin pitches for applications in no-frost domestic refrig-
erator/freezers. In addition, physical models in previous numerical
investigations performed for the FHEXs are with continuous fins or
single fin; however, related simulations with discrete fin physical
models are rare. In this paper, perforated fins are introduced in a
FHEX with large fin pitches and discrete fin types for applications
in no-frost domestic refrigerator/freezers. The air-side heat trans-
fer performance of the perforated FHEX with the various perfora-
tion diameter and number is investigated with three-dimensional
simulation and compared with that of the plain FHEX. In addition,
the effect of the fin pitch on the heat transfer performance of the
perforated FHEX is also examined.
2. Model description
2.1. Physical model
The picture of a plain finned-tube heat exchangers used in
domestic refrigerator/freezers is shown in Fig. 1 and its primary
geometric parameters are listed in Table 1. The heat exchanger
has 2 columns and 19 rows, and several fins are attached to the
tube in each row. It should be noted that the fin pitch varies along
the air flow direction in order to avoid flow obstruction due to frost
 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207 201

Fig. 1. One finned-tube heat exchanger with large fin pitches.

Table 1
Primary geometric dimension for the studied finned-tube heat exchanger.

Tube row number 2 Fig. 2. A schematic view of three rows of the FHEX with identical fin pitch.
Tube outside diameter Do (mm) 8.0
Transverse pitch PT (mm) 25
Longitudinal pitch PL (mm) 30
Fin pitch Fp (mm) 16 rows:20
2.2. Governing equations
79 rows:15
1012 rows:10
1319 rows:7.5 The air flow in the study is assumed to be three dimensional,
Fin thickness (mm) 0.2 incompressible, steady-state, and turbulent. The Reynolds number
Vertical fin space (mm) 3
ranges from 750 to 2350 based on the air velocity through the min-
imum free flow area and the tube outside diameter. Turbulent ke
realizable model with enhanced wall functions is used to predict
formation on the air-side heat transfer surface. In addition, the fin the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics in the computa-
type of the FHEX is discrete and the vertical fin space is 3 mm and tional domains. The thermal contact resistance between the tube
fin thickness of 0.2 mm. According to Ref. [26], when the vertical and fin collar is assumed to be ignored and the temperature of
fin space is larger than 4mm, its effect on the j factor became neg- the tube wall are assumed to be constant for the computational
ligible. Meanwhile, the study of Kuvannarat etc. [29] indicated that simplicity. The effect of fin thickness on the heat conduction in
when the fin pitch is larger than 2.54 mm, the associated influence the fins is taken into account and the temperature distribution in
of fin thickness on the heat transfer coefficient is decreased. There- the fins will be determined by solving the conjugated heat transfer
fore, the two geometry parameters are not taken into account in problem between fluid and solid in the computational domain. The
present paper. A schematic top view of three tube rows with iden- software FLUENT 15.0 is used to perform the simulations in this
tical fin pitches is shown in Fig. 2(a). Due to limitations on the paper, and its code is based on the Finite Volume Method. The cou-
computational resources, only half of the three tube rows are taken pling between the pressure and velocity is implemented by the
as a calculation element in present study. The computational SIMPLE algorithm to discretize the governing equations. The
domains are sketched by dotted lines along with the tube symme- Reynolds-averaged NavierStokes equations for steady state are
try conditions but without the elbows for simplicity. The upstream as follows:
boundary of the computational domain in Fig. 2(b) is located at 1.5 Continuity equation:
times transverse pitch from the center of the first row while the @qui
downstream boundary is set as 2.5 times transverse pitch from 0 1
@xi
the last row. The computational domain has the fixed overall
dimensions with two columns and three tube rows and the fin Momentum equation
pitch varies from 7.5 mm to 20.0 mm. When the air flows along 

@qui uj @p @ @ui @uj 2 @ul @
the outside surface of the tubes, there exists a region behind the
l
dij
qu0i u0j
@xj @xi @xj @xj @xi 3 @xl @xj
tubes where the heat transfer is weak. Thus, perforations are prop-
2
erly placed on fins in order to enhance the air side heat transfer
performance at that region. The dimension of the plain and four


@ui @uj 2 @l
different perforated fins are shown in Fig. 3 and the value is listed
qu0i u0j lt
qj lt j dij 3
in Table 2.
@xj @xj 3 @xj
202 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207

Fig. 3. The dimension of plain fin and four different perforated fins.

Table 2 The preprocessor GAMBIT was used to generate the computa-

Primary geometric dimension for the four perforated fins. tional domain mesh. A pave mesh scheme is used in the fin planes,
Fin type #1 #2 #3 #4 except near the tube wall, where a map refined mesh is used to
Perforation number 5 9 5 5
accurately calculate viscous effects within the boundary layer. At
Perforation diameter (mm) 4 4 5 6 the upstream and downstream domains where the structure is
square and simple, a structured map mesh scheme is used. More-
over, the computational domain is discredited by nonuniform grids
The realizable ke model of FLUENT [30] adopts the following with the grids of the fin coil region being finer and those in the
transport equations for k and e: extension domains being coarser. In order to validate the solution

  independency of the grid, care is taken for the relative errors in the
@ @ lt @k heat transfer rate between different grids, which is shown in Fig. 4.
qjuj l Gk Gb
qe
Y M Sk 4
@xj @xj rj @xj It is found that the heat transfer rate yielded by the grid with 1860
thousand cells at Re = 1150 is lower 1.2% than that of gird with

  2900 thousand cells. Thus, the solution of grid system with 1860
@ @ lt @ e e2
qeuj l qC 1 Se
qC 2 p thousand cells can be regarded as gird-independent. In view of
@xj @xj re @xj k me
the limitations on the CPU time and computer resources, the grid
e
C 1e C 3e Gb Se 5 system with 1860 thousand cells are used to discretize the compu-
k
tational domains. Similar examinations are also conducted for
Energy equation: other cases. The solutions are considered to be converged when

 the normalized residual values are less than 10
6 for the energy
@ @ @T
ui qE p keff 6 equation and 10
3 for the other variables.
@xi @xi @xi

where E is the total energy and keff is the effective conductivity, 3. Data reductions
including the turbulent thermal conductivity kt defined according
to the turbulence model being used. The models consider only air side, neglecting collar contact
The energy transport equation used in the solid region (fins) is: resistance and thermal conduction resistance in the tube wall.

 The eh-NTU method is used to determine the air side conductance
@ @T (UA). Since the tube wall has constant temperature, cmin/cmax
ks 0: 7
@xi @xi

2.3. Boundary conditions and solution algorithm

At the upstream boundary conditions, the dry air entering the

computational domain is assumed to have uniform velocity and
uniform temperature of 298 K. In the interest of computational
effort the CFD models comprise of air side only, hence constant
tube wall temperature (323 K) is used. The outlet boundary, i.e.
the downstream boundary, is defined as the outflow boundary,
which means that there is a zero diffusion flux for all flow variables
and the outflow plane has no impact on the upstream flow. One
surface of the computational domain is symmetry boundary as
shown in Fig. 2(a). At the symmetry plane, heat flux is assumed
zero. The normal velocity component at the symmetry plane is also
zero, i.e. no convective flux across that symmetry plane occurs. The
fluid region comprises of the upstream, the downstream and the
bundle zone, and the solid region includes the fin.
In the following simulation case, the properties of the air and fin
are assumed to be constant and independent of the temperature.
The material of fin is aluminum and its thermal conductivity is
202.4 W
1 m
1 K
1. The properties of the dry air are q = 1.185 kg/ Fig. 4. Variation of simulated heat transfer rate of different grid system at
m3, cp = 1.005 kJ/(kg K), and m = 15.53  10
6 m2/s, respectively. Re = 1150.
 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207 203

becomes zero, which yields eh = 1
exp(
NTU). Meanwhile,

according to the definition of the effectiveness of heat exchanger,
eh can be derived as:
T in
T out
eh 8
T in
T w
where Tin is the inlet temperature of the air flow, Tout is the outlet
temperature and Tw is the tube wall temperature. Meanwhile,
UA
NTU 9
qm cair

UA g0 h0 A0 10
The fin effectiveness g0 which is needed to determine the air
side heat transfer coefficient h0 is obtained using the Schmidt
(1949) approximation method [31]:
Af
g0 1
1
g 11
A0

tanh0:5mDo /
g 12
0:5mDo /
where Af is the fin surface area and A0 is the total area of the tube
and fin surfaces, and m is defined as:

0:5
2ho
m 13
kf dt

/ Req
11 0:35 lnReq  14

0:5
XM XL
Req 2:54
0:3 15
Do X M

Pt
XM 16
2
!0:5
1 P2t
XL P 2l 17
2 4

With the above equations, the air-side heat transfer coefficient

and fin efficiency can be determined by iteration, and the flow
chart is shown in Fig. 5. The flow and heat transfer coefficient
are expressed in dimensionless form as follows: Fig. 5. Flow chart of the data reduction for air-side heat transfer coefficient.

umax D0
Re 18
m
number based on the tube diameter = 500800, and the vertical
ho D o fin space = 17 mm. Numerical simulations for the validation are
Nu 19 carried out under these same operating conditions and fin geomet-
k
rical configurations. Fig. 6 shows the comparison of the CFD simu-
Nu lated j factors with the predicted values obtained from the
j 20 experimental correlation. It can be seen that the relative deviations
RePr1=3
of the simulated predictions are within 20% compared with the cor-
DPDo relation predictions, which means that the numerical simulation
f 21 can produce reasonable results for the heat transfer performance
1=2qu2m L
in FHEXs. It can also be observed in Fig. 6 that the value of j-CFD
where um, umax is the mean air velocity and the velocity through simulated by present study is lower than that of j-correlation calcu-
the minimum free flow area, respectively, and k is the air thermal lated by the experimental correlation, which is caused by two main
conductivity. factors. The first one is that the air used in present numerical sim-
ulation is dry while it is wet in the literature. Since the dry air has
4. Simulation results and discussions smaller thermal conductivity than the wet air, the j factor calcu-
lated by numerical simulation in present study is lower than that
In order to validate the reliability of the numerical simulation calculated by the correlation. The second one is that there is water
procedure, the experimental correlation obtained in Ref. [26] is in the tube exchanging heat with the outside air in the literature
adopted. The range of the database in the literature is as follows: [26] while this is not taken into account in the present simulation
number of tube rows = 24, fin pitches = 7.515 mm, Reynolds by assuming the tube surface constant temperature. It is named
204 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207

Fig. 8. The j/f factor variation against Reynolds number for the plain and perforated
Fig. 6. Comparison of simulated j factor with predicted data using the correlation.
fins.

as the airside model without water in the tube and the air/water
the same heat transfer coefficient. Thus, the #3 and #4 fin can be
model with considering water in another literature [32]. Moreover,
regarded as the optimal fin design. However, the heat transfer sur-
according to this Ref. [32], the heat transfer performance predicted
face of the fin is reduced due to the perforations, and the reduction
by the airside model is slightly lower than the air/water side model
is 3.4%, 6.0%, 5.2% and 7.6% for the #1, #2, #3 and #4 perforated fin,
which is close to the experiment conditions.
respectively. Moreover, the #4 fin with diameter 6mm may destroy
There are four kinds of perforated fins introduced in this study,
the fin structure in the perforation processing, so it is not adopted
which is shown in Fig. 3. All holes on the fins are placed at the same
as the optimal fin. Since the #3 perforated fin obtains the greater j
locations. The variations on air-side j factor and pressure drop of
factor increase and relatively less surface reduce, it is taken as an
the FHEXs with plain fins and the four perforated fins are shown
optimal design.
in Fig. 7 when the fin pitch is 10.0 mm. It can be seen that the j fac-
Fig. 9 illustrates the temperature distributions over the fins side
tors of all FHEXs decreases with the increasing Reynolds number
of the plain and perforated FHEXs at Re = 2350. Analysis of these
and the considerable differences between the j factors of the plain
temperature fields yields almost identical patterns for all perfo-
fin and perforated fins are apparent, especially at the high Reynolds
rated fins and, therefore, only the results of the #3 perforated fins
number. The j factor of the #3 and #4 perforated FHEXs can be
have been plotted. It can be seen that the temperature difference of
raised by 8.1% and 7.9%, respectively, compared with the plain
the perforated fin between the tube base and fin tip decreases
FHEX at Re = 2350. The #1 and #2 perforated FHEXs also show
compared with the plain fin. More temperature drops mean the
an increase of j factor by 6.32% and 5.52%, respectively, at
higher heat transfer coefficient of the air-side. The heat transfer
Re = 2350. It also can be seen that the pressure drop of the plain
in the air-side recirculation region behind the finned tube is weak,
and perforated FHEX is very small and varies slightly between
thus, there are introduced perforations. Fig. 10 shows the air veloc-
the different fin types. Therefore, the air side pressure drop is no
ity distribution at the middle of two fins along the air flow direc-
more discussed in the paper. Furthermore, the flow area goodness
tion when the Reynolds number varies from 750 to 2350. It can
factor j/f defined by London [33] is an important parameter for
optimizing fins. The variation of j/f against the Reynolds number
for the plain and four different perforated fins are presented in
Fig. 8. The #3 and #4 fin have higher j/f factor than the plain, #1
and #2 fin, which means it has less pressure drop with getting

Fig. 9. The temperature distribution on one #3 fin at Re = 2350 (a) plain fin; (b)
Fig. 7. Effects of perforation number and diameter on the j factor and pressure drop. perforated fin.
 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207 205

Fig. 10. The velocity distribution between fins with various Reynolds number (a) plain fin (b) perforated fin.

be obviously observed that the velocity behind the tubes between
the perforated fins is higher than that between the plain fins and
the surface area where the velocity is close to zero decreases.
Fig. 11 displays the velocity vector at one cross section along the
x-direction where the middle perforation of #3 fin is placed. It
can be seen that there is air flowing in the perforation and the
boundary layer behind the tube is interrupted. Therefore, the
perforations on fins can break the boundary layer of the flow and
reduce the air-side recirculation region at the same time. Due to
the above effect of perforations, the air side heat transfer
coefficient is improved and the temperature difference between
the tube base and fin tip decreases.
It is well known that the flow hydrodynamics and the
corresponding heat transfer of FHEXs are related to the fin pitches.
According to Ref [26], the j factor increases with the increase in fin
pitches at all Reynolds numbers for the FHEXs with large fin
pitches. As the fin pitch increases, the boundary layer interruption
between the fins is delayed. Therefore, the j factors for larger
fin pitches are higher than those for smaller fin pitches due to
the delay of boundary layer interruption between the fins.
206 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207

Fig. 11. The velocity vector comparison of plain fin and #3 fin at Re = 2350. (a) Plain
fin (b) perforated fin. Fig. 13. The variation of the heat transfer rate with the different fin pitches.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the thermal perfor-
mance enhancement caused by perforations at different fin
pitches. Thus, Fig. 12 shows the air-side j factor variations with
various Reynolds number under different fin pitches. The perfo-
rated fins are the #3 fin with 5 holes of 5 mm diameter, which is
taken as the optimal perforated fins. It can be observed that the
heat transfer performance enhancement with larger fin pitches is
slighter than that with smaller fin pitches at high Re. For Re at
2350, the increase in j factor of perforated FHEXs compared with
plain FHEXs rises from 1.7% to 9.2% when the fin pitch varies from
20.0 mm to 7.5 mm. The boundary layer thickness is thinner for
the smaller fin pitch, so the perforations on the fins can generate
more effect on the boundary layer, thus obtaining greater enhance-
ment of the air side heat transfer performance.
It is obvious that perforations will reduce the total heat transfer
surfaces of air contacting with the fins. Since the heat transfer rate
between the air and the flow in the tube is depends on not only the
air-side heat transfer coefficient but also the surface areas. Their
combined effect on the heat transfer rate is deserved researching
and the results are presented in Fig. 13 with different fin pitches.
It can be observed that for the fin pitches of 20.0 mm and
15.0 mm, the heat transfer rate of the perforated FHEXs almost
keeps the same with the plain FHEXs for all Reynolds numbers. It
means that the decrease in the heat transfer area counteracting
the increase in the air-side heat coefficient. For the fin pitches of
10.0 mm and 7.5 mm, the heat transfer rates are reduced by 3.8%
and 6.3%, respectively, at Re = 750 due to the perforated fins. As
the Reynolds number increases, the decrease in the heat transfer
rate becomes small under the combined effect of the heat transfer
coefficient increase and areas decrease. Finally, the heat transfer
rates of the perforated FHEXs are more than those of the plain
FHEXs by 1.7% and 3.2% at Re = 2350 for the fin pitches of
10.0 mm and 7.5 mm, respectively.
According to the above discussions, it is known that the loss in
the heat transfer rate is most obvious for the FHEX with the fin
pitch of 7.5 mm at Re = 750 due to the perforations. For this case,
two methods are further proposed to compensate total surfaces
for the perforated FHEX. The first way is to add fin numbers by
reducing the fin pitch from 7.5 mm to 7.0 mm; the second way is
to increase the fin width from 27 mm to 27.9 mm. Increasing the
fin width reduces the vertical fin space, and then may effects the
air side j factor as reducing the fin pitch does. The simulated results
of the heat transfer rate for FHEXs with four different fins are
shown in Table 3. It can be seen that the difference between the
j factor of the plain and perforated fins is less than 1%, and thus
it can be negligible. The total heat transfer area of perforated
FHEXs is larger by 3.08% than the plain FHEXs through decreasing
fin pitches but it keeps nearly the same by increasing the fin width.
Meanwhile, the heat transfer rates are raised by 2.50% and 3.79%,
respectively. Thus, the problem of the serious heat transfer rate
loss for the perforated FHEX with the fin pitch of 7.5 mm at
Re = 750 can be solved by these two methods. The perforated fins
with the proposed fins may have great advantages with respect
to plain fins due to their higher heat transfer coefficient without
any penalty in the amount of heat transfer rate.

Table 3
The simulated results at Re = 750 for fin pitch = 7.5 mm.

Fin type Area Increase j Increase Heat Increase

(m2) (%) (10
2) (%) transfer (%)
rate (W)
Plain fin 0.130 0 1.01 0 64.10 0
Perforated fin 0.125
3.85 1.00
0.9% 60.27
6.30
Perforated fin with fin 0.134 3.08 1.006
0.4% 64.26 2.50
pitch of 7.0 mm
Perforated fin with fin 0.129
0.76 1.013 0.3% 66.53 3.79
width of 27.9 mm
Fig. 12. The j factor of the FHEX under the different fin pitch.
 X. Liu et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 100 (2016) 199207
5. Conclusions
In this study, the perforated fins are introduced for the finned-
tube heat exchangers (FHEXs) with large fin pitches applied in no-
frost domestic refrigerator/freezers. The air side thermal perfor-
mances of the plain and perforated FHEXs have been investigated
numerically and compared. Simulation results indicate that an
optimal perforation design can be obtained to realize maximum
increase in the j factor for the perforated FHEXs compared with
those of the plain FHEXs when the fin pitch is 10.0 mm. It is also
found that the maximum increase in the j factor rises when the
air-side Reynolds number is from 750 to 2350. For the perforated
FHEX with fin pitch of 10.0 mm, the j factor increases by 0.3% at
Re = 750 and 8.1% at Re = 2350, respectively, with the optimal per-
foration design. In addition, the j factor increase for the perforated
FHEXs compared with the plain FHEX is more obvious when the fin
pitch is smaller. When the fin pitch varies from 20.0 mm to
7.5 mm, the increase in the j factor varies from 2.7% to 9.2% at
Re = 2350. However, the simulated results show that the total heat
transfer rate is reduced by 6.5% at Re = 750 when the fin pitch is
7.5 mm due to the heat transfer surfaces loss caused by perfora-
tions. For this case, two methods are further proposed to compen-
sate total surfaces for the perforated FHEXs in order to obtain
higher air-side j factor without heat transfer rate decrease.
Acknowledgments
This study is financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under the Grant No.
51576149. The authors would like to thank NSFC for the
sponsorship.
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