The mechanism of turbulent convective heat transfer enhancement was experimentally investigated by
measuring the heat transfer in two dimensional roughness tubes with different roughness heights at various
Reynolds numbers. The results show that there is a maximum Nusselt number ratio (Nu/Nu0) for a
fixed roughness height with increasing Reynolds numbers. For water as working fluid, heat transfer can
hardly be increased when the roughness height is lower than the thickness of the viscous sublayer, and
both heat transfer and flow friction begin to increase when the roughness height is higher than the viscous
sublayer. When the roughness height is more than five times of the viscous sublayer thickness, the
flow friction begins to increase sharply but heat transfer is slowly enhanced. So the best heat transfer
enhancement for a given pumping power is reached when the roughness height is about three times
of the viscous sublayer thickness. The Prandtl number influences to the turbulent heat transfer enhancement
by roughness were also analyzed.