D. A. Nield
Department of Engineering Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Andrey V. Kuznetsov
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7910, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA
Sinopsis
Steady laminar flow of an incompressible fluid through a tube of almost circular cross-section is examined analytically, first for the case of a tube whose wall is wavy in the azimuthal direction, and then for one wavy in the axial direction. For the first case, a complete solution of the flow and forced convection heat transfer (for constant flux at the boundary) is possible for a wall of arbitrary cross-section. It is shown that, for a fixed axial pressure gradient, any departure from circularity leads to a reduction in volume flux and a reduction in heat transfer. For the second case no simple analytic solution is possible, but estimates of the increase in resistance due to a departure from circularity have been made.