I just saw a photo of a floor heating system, and there aren’t many “straight” heating parts, it’s all curved. Why?
^(Might’ve ^used ^the ^wrong ^flair)
In: Engineering
Heat transferrence depends on surface area. If you just have a block, the surface area is only the outer areas. If you cut that block, you get all the area on each side of the cut as well.
This is why heat sinks have all those fins.
For heating and cooling systems like you’ve described, they need to use coils because the heating medium is a liquid that needs to keep moving through the system to transfer the heat.
Efficiency. You can heat a smaller area with less energy and keep it at that temp with less energy as well. Picture a tub of water, that water can hold it’s heat better than if the water was spread out into a shallow trough.
In addition to what the others here have said, coils also offer the ability to expand and contract due to temperature change without cracking or buckling. Because they’e already bent into a coil, they have an easy path of expansion in every direction.
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