Heat Transfer of Springs in Oblique Crossflows

An experimental program is presented of heated tension springs in an external crossflow over a range of laminar Reynolds numbers, spring stretch ratios, and angles of attack. Extensive measurements of the forced convection heat transfer of helical wire within a wind tunnel reveal an interesting nonmonotonic dependence on angle of attack. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, showing good agreement with the experimental data, are used to explore the behavior and gain a better understanding of the observed trends. A dimensionless correlation is developed that well captures the experimental and CFD data and can be used as an efficient computational tool in broader applications.