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Investigation Of Important Surface Characteristics Of A Finned Tube Heat Exchanger, Bobby Dale Stafford

Masters Theses

"Surface characteristics of a finned tube heat exchanger were examined to help predict the contact geometry between metal surfaces. These characteristics were the surface roughness and waviness and the material hardness. A scanning electron microscope was used to observe the surface topography of the fins as well as examining the contact between the aluminum fin and the copper tube.

Comparisons of the surface roughness were then made between heat exchangers having different fin numbers (20, 14, and 6) with the result that as the fin number decreased, the roughness also decreased. For a given fin number, it was discovered that …