The correlation every tube-side rating starts with
For turbulent flow inside a plain tube, the working correlation is . Read aloud: Nusselt equals nought-point-nought-two-three, Reynolds to the nought-point-eight, Prandtl to the n. Every symbol has already been introduced except , the Prandtl exponent, and it is the whole exam: when the tube fluid is being heated, when it is being cooled. One digit, and a systematic error in every rating you write afterwards.
The correlation has a licence, and outside it the number it returns is decoration: above 10 000, between 0.6 and 160, and a tube at least ten diameters long. It is also only accurate to about ±25 % — which is why plant engineers add fouling margin rather than extra decimal places.
And the last step is the one students skip. Nu is a bare number; nobody buys a bare number. Since , the film coefficient comes back out as , where is the FLUID's conductivity and is the tube's inside diameter. Push the units through: divided by metres is , exactly what a film coefficient wears. If they had not cancelled, the rearrangement would be wrong, no appeal — units guide, but the check runs one way only.