4085 -- A New Method to Estimate the Thermal Contact Resistance in Finned-Tube Heat Exchangers PDF

The method of parameter estimation is applied to the measurement of the thermal contact resistance at the tube wall-fin collar interface. Tests are performed on an elementary heat exchanger consisting of two aluminium tubes joined by mechanical expansion to eleven aluminium fins. The same thermal problem is numerically solved by the finite element method. Comparison between the computed fin temperature distribution and the experimental data allows the thermal contact resistance to be estimated. The reasonable agreement between these results and those of previous investigations and the relative simplicity of the suggested method encourage further analysis of its features in the measurement of thermal contact resistance in finned-tube heat exchangers.

Units: SI

KEYWORDS: year 1997, Calculating, thermal resistance, heat exchangers, finned tube heat exchangers, measuring, testing, comparing, temperature distribution, experiment, heat flow, aluminium