Buoyancy Effect on Developing Turbulent Flow and Heat Transfer in a Helical Pipe With Finite Pitch

Numerical modeling was performed to investigate the buoyancy effect on developing turbulent flow and the heat transfer characteristics of saturated water in a helical pipe with finite pitch. The renormalization group (RNG) κ–ε model was used to account for the turbulent flow and heat transfer in the helical pipe at a constant wall temperature with or without buoyancy force effect. A control volume method with second-order accuracy was used to numerically solve the three-dimensional full elliptic governing equations for this problem. The O-type nonuniform structured grid system was adopted to discretize the computation domain. The Boussinesq approximation was applied to deal with the buoyancy. This study explored the influence of buoyancy on the developing heat transfer along the helical pipe. Based on the results of this research, the velocity, temperature, and Nusselt number are presented graphically and analyzed.