3D numerical investigation of turbulent forced convection in wavy ducts with trapezoidal cross‐section

Abstract

The present investigation is an extension of the authors’ previous work on ducts with different cross sections. It concerns application of turbulence models for forced convective heat transfer in three‐dimensional corrugated or wavy ducts. Different wavy ducts with fully developed flow and temperature fields are considered. The numerical approach is based on the finite volume technique with a non‐staggered grid arrangement. For handling the pressure‐velocity coupling the SIMPLEC‐algorithm is used. Cyclic boundary conditions are imposed in the main flow direction to achieve fully developed conditions. The non‐linear k‐ε model of Speziale with wall functions is used to calculate the turbulent stresses. The simple eddy diffusivity concept is applied to calculate the heat fluxes, but the GGDH and the WET methods are also used in some cases. The influence of the geometry parameters and comparison between different ducts are presented in terms of the friction factor and average Nusselt number. In particular the secondary velocity field and the cross sectional temperature distributions are investigated.

Citation

Rokni, M. and Sundén, B. (1998), "3D numerical investigation of turbulent forced convection in wavy ducts with trapezoidal cross‐section", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 118-141. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615539810198069