Forced convection in banks of inclined cylinders at low Reynolds numbers

This study documents the pressure drop and heat transfer through bundles of parallel cylinders in a domain that has been overlooked, namely, low Reynolds numbers, arrays that are long in the direction of flow such that the flow is hydraulically and thermally fully developed, and cylinders inclined relative to the flow direction. The numerical results cover the range 1 ≤ ReD ≤ 30, 0.72 ≤ Pr ≤ 100, 0.6 ≤ φ ≤ 0.95 and 0° ≤ β ≤ 60°, where φ is the porosity of the bundle as a saturated porous medium, and β is the angle between the verified by means of experimental measurements of the pressure drop across a bundle with 115 cylinders in the flow direction, in the range 8 < ReD < 50, 0.84 ≤ φ ≤ 0.92 and 0° ≤ β ≤ 60°. The results show that significant errrors may occur if the available large-ReD information is extrapolated to the domain covered by this study.