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Secondary flow is the flow in the cross section normal to the main flow. It plays an important role on the enhanced heat transfer and in the applications in other fields. Secondary flow can greatly enhance the convective heat transfer. In order to find the effectiveness of secondary flow for heat transfer enhancement, a nondimensional parameter, Se, based on the absolute vorticity flux is reported to specify the intensity of secondary flow. Its physical meaning is the ratio of inertial force to viscous force induced by secondary flow. As an example, the effectiveness of secondary flow was numerically studied for a flat tube bank fin heat exchanger with vortex generators (VGs) mounted on both surfaces of the fin. The contributions of VGs are investigated for the enhancements of secondary flow intensity, convective heat transfer, and pressure drop. The method is demonstrated using Se to find out the optimum configurations of VGs. The results reveal that close relationships exist not only between the span-average nondimensional intensity of secondary flow and the span-average Nusselt number but also between the volume average nondimensional intensity of secondary flow and the overall average Nusselt number. For the configuration studied, a ratio of Nusselt number enhancement to the friction factor enhancement increases with increasing the enhancement of secondary flow intensity. As a supplement to traditional criteria on a good performance heat transfer surface, the nondimensional intensity of secondary flow can be used clearly for an optimum value of VG parameter.
Song et al. (Wed,) studied this question.