Heat transfer in reciprocating planar curved tube with piston cooling application

This paper describes an experimental study of heat transfer in a reciprocating planar curved tube that simulates a cooling passage in piston. The coupled inertial, centrifugal, and reciprocating forces in the reciprocating curved tube interact with buoyancy to exhibit a synergistic effect on heat transfer. For the present experimental conditions, the local Nusselt numbers in the reciprocating curved tube are in the range of 0.6-1.15 times of static tube levels. Without buoyancy interaction, the coupled reciprocating and centrifugal force effect causes the heat transfer to be initially reduced from the static level but recovered when the reciprocating force is further increased. Heat transfer improvement and impediment could be superimposed by the location-dependent buoyancy effect. The empirical heat transfer correlation has been developed to permit the evaluation of the individual and interactive effects of inertial, centrifugal, and reciprocating forces with and without buoyancy interaction on local heat transfer in a reciprocating planar curved tube.