Based on the superposition principle of the nucleate boiling and convective heat transfer terms,a new correlation is developed for flow boiling heat transfer characteristics in helically coiled tubes.The effects of the geometric and system parameters on heat transfer characteristics in helically coiled tubes are investigated by collecting large amounts of experimental data and analyzing the heat transfer mechanisms. The existing correlations are divided into two categories,and they are calculated with the experimental data.The Dn factor is introduced to take into account the effect of a complex geometrical structure on flow boiling heat transfer.A new correlation is developed for predicting the flow boiling heat transfer coefficients in the helically coiled tubes,which is validated by the experimental data of R134a flow boiling heat transfer in them;and the average relative error and root mean square error of the new correlation are calculated.The results show that the new correlation agrees well with the experimental data,indicating that the new correlation can be used for predicting flow boiling heat transfer characteristics in the helically coiled tubes.
The experiments of the onset of nucleate boiling using R134a as working fluid were conducted in vertical helically-coiled tubes. The experiments were carried out with a range of pressure from 450 to 850 kPa, inlet subcooling from 4.7 to 15.0℃, heat flux from 0.11 to 8.9 kW/m2 and mass flux from 218. 2 to 443. 7 kg/（ m2 · s ）. The heat flux, superheat and temperature undershoot at the ONB are analyzed in vertical helically-coiled tubes. Also, the effects of mass flux, system pressure, inlet subcooling and geometric parameters on the ONB are studied. The results demonstrate that the inception heat flux and superheat increase with increasing mass flux and inlet subcooling, but decrease with increasing system pressure and helix diameter. The pitch of the helical coil has a slight effect on the wall superheat and heat flux at the ONB. The correlation of heat flux at the ONB of subcooled flow boiling in helical coil is developed based on the experimental data, and it shows a good agreement with the experimental data.
