Effect of Fin Inclination Angel on Heat Transfer Improvement in an Annular Space of a Rotor Stator

The present work deals with the numerical investigation of forced convection flow and heat transfer in a finned concentric annulus. The outer cylinder is axially finned while the rotating inner cylinder has a smooth surface. Our research focus on the impact of the fin inclination angle on heat transfer enhancement in rotating annular channels. Tests were carried out for different geometrical configurations using fins with inclined angle (α = 30°, 60°, 90° and 120°). Numerical study is based on effective Reynolds number and Taylor number. The results obtained using the code ANSYS-Fluent with SST k-ω turbulence model show a good agreement between the experimental and the numerical results. In the presence of rotational flow (Ta = 1.14 × 106), the results indicate that α =120° is the optimal case which improves significantly the heat and mass transfer inside the finned channel.