An experimental investigation of heat transfer to pulsating pipe air flow with different amplitudes

Heat transfer characteristics to both laminar and turbulent pulsating pipe flows under different conditions of Reynolds number, pulsation frequency, pulsator location and tube diameter were experimentally investigated. The tube wall of uniform heat flux condition was considered for both cases. Reynolds number varied from 750 to 12,320 while the frequency of pulsation ranged from 1 to 10 Hz. With locating the pulsator upstream of the inlet of the test section tube, results showed an increase in heat transfer rate due to pulsation by as much as 30% with flow Reynolds number of 1,643 and pulsation frequency of 1 Hz, depending on the upstream location of the pulsator valve. Closer the valve to the tested section inlet, the better improvement in the heat transfer coefficient is achieved. Upon comparing the heat transfer results of the upstream and the downstream pulsation, at Reynolds number of 1,366 and 1,643, low values of the relative mean Nusselt number were obtained with the upstream pulsation. Comparing the heat transfer results of the two studied test sections tubes for Reynolds number range from 8,000 to 12,000 and pulsation frequency range from 1.0 to 10 Hz showed that more improvement in heat transfer rate was observed with a larger tube diameter. For Reynolds number ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 and pulsation frequency of 10 Hz, an improvement in the relative mean Nusselt number of about 50% was obtained at Reynolds number of 8,000 for the large test section diameter of 50 mm. While, for the small test section diameter of 15 mm, at same conditions of Reynolds number and frequency, a reduction in the relative mean Nusselt number of up to 10% was obtained.