A parametric study on the laminar flow in an alternating horizontal or vertical oval cross-section pipe with computational fluid dynamics

A parametric study, aiming to understand the effects of geometrical changes of an alternating horizontal or vertical oval cross-section pipe to its thermal performance, is presented. Three geometrical parameters are examined. The study is conducted by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and is focused on laminar flows only. The study shows that it is very difficult to find an optimized geometry which can perform well for a wide range of Reynolds numbers. However, the results indicate that the current pipe, if well designed, can still perform much better than a circular pipe at the flow conditions specified in this paper.