Infrared thermography applied to the study of the local heat transfer enhancement in a wall corrugated tubular heat exchanger for food applications

The combination of global and local performance analysis represents a powerful tool for the optimal design and sizing of heat exchangers, especially when wall corrugations are employed to enhance inner convection. In this paper, both approaches are applied to a transversely corrugated pipe to propose a thermal correlation and investigate the effects of corrugation on the local heat transfer performance. For the local analysis, infrared thermographic measurements, combined with the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem in the solid wall domain, were used to evaluate the internal convective heat transfer coefficient. The combined approach offers a valuable tool for the optimal design of heat exchangers and related thermal processes, particularly in applications where knowledge or prediction of the local temperature-time history of fluid particles is critical. This is especially relevant in the food industry, where such passive heat transfer enhancement solutions are widely used.