Heat-Transfer Rates to Crossflowing Mercury in a Staggered Tube Bank—I

An experimental heat-transfer program has been under way for some time at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the general purpose of which is to obtain and correlate heat-transfer coefficients for liquid metals flowing outside of tube banks. This paper covers one phase of the program; i.e., the measurement of heat-transfer coefficients for mercury flowing normal to a staggered tube bank. The factors studied were (a) linear velocity, (b) tube location in the bank, (c) circumferential variation of the local coefficient for a single tube, (d) type of contact, i.e., “wetting” versus “nonwetting,” and (e) pressure drop.