Numerical Investigation of Steady-State Heat Conduction in Arbitrary Shaped Heat Exchanger Tubes with Mutliply Connected Cross Sections

The paper outlines a numerical method called boundary element method (BEM) which is employed to study heat transfer through the walls of arbitrary shaped heat exchanger tubes having arbitrary shaped holes. The method is implemented for two different cases to obtain the approximate solution of the two dimensional Laplace equation. For both the cases, the inner surfaces are maintained at a constant temperature. However, the outermost periphery is subjected to a constant temperature in the first case and kept at convective condition in the second case. Here the discretization of the boundary produces a system of equations which on solving produce the expression for temperature. The results predicted by BEM are validated with those predicted by Ansys Fluent®. The remarkable accuracy of the results with those obtained from Fluent shows the capability of the method to successfully handle the considered steady-state conduction problem in heat exchanger tubes of multiply connected cross sections. This article uses BEM to study conduction problems in multiply connected exchanger tubes. This work may be extended to study 3D heat conduction through multiply connected tubes.