Evaluation of Heat Transfer Augmentation in a Tube Fitted with Grooved Twisted Tapes: A Comparative Thermal-Hydraulic Performance Study

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is conducted to systematically investigate heat transfer enhancement in tubes fitted with grooved twisted tapes and to identify the groove geometry that provides the best thermo-hydraulic performance. Three grooved twisted tape configurations—circular-grooved twisted tapes (CGTT), rectangular-grooved twisted tapes (RGTT), and triangular-grooved twisted tapes (TGTT)—are evaluated and compared with a smooth tube and a conventional twisted tape over a Reynolds number range of 5000–20,000 under isothermal wall conditions. The grooved twisted tapes enhance heat transfer through the combined effects of swirl-induced secondary flows and groove-generated flow disturbances, which intensify turbulent mixing and reduce the thickness of the thermal boundary layer. Compared with the plain tube, the grooved configurations increase the Nusselt number by 1.472–1.98 times while increasing the friction factor by 3.21–3.58 times. Relative to the conventional twisted tape, the grooved designs provide an additional 8.0–12.1% enhancement in heat transfer with only a marginal increase of 0.2–1.5% in friction factor. The thermodynamic analysis indicates that the CGTT configuration exhibits the lowest entropy generation rate and exergy loss throughout the investigated Reynolds number range. In particular, the CGTT achieves a Bejan number of 0.999841 at Re = 5000, demonstrating an excellent balance between heat transfer enhancement and frictional losses. Furthermore, the CGTT attains the highest thermal performance factor (TPF) of 1.294 at Re = 5000 and maintains TPF > 1.0 over the entire Reynolds number range. The overall performance ranking is consistently established as CGTT > TGTT > RGTT based on comprehensive analyses of velocity fields, streamline patterns, turbulent kinetic energy distributions, temperature contours, and thermodynamic characteristics. Although the present study identifies the circular-groove configuration as the optimal design for a twist ratio (y/W) of 3.0, further parametric investigations involving variations in twist ratio, groove dimensions, and groove pitch are required to develop generalized design guidelines.