| Abstract: | Fluids engineering is extremely important in a wide variety of materials processing
systems, such as soldering, welding, extrusion of plastics and other polymeric
materials, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), composite materials manufacturing.
In particular, mixed convection due to moving surfaces is very important in
these applications. Mixed convection in a channel, as a result of buoyancy
and motion of one of its walls has received little research attention and few
guidelines are available for choosing the best performing channel configuration,
particularly when radiative effects are significant.
In this study a numerical investigation of the effect of radiation on
mixed convection in air due to the interaction between a buoyancy flow
and an unheated moving plate induced flow in a uniformly heated convergent
vertical channel is carried out. The moving plate has a constant velocity
and moves in the buoyancy force direction. The principal walls of the
channel are heated at uniform heat flux. The numerical analysis is
accomplished by means of the commercial code Fluent. The effects of
the wall emissivity, the minimum channel spacing, the converging angle
and the moving plate velocity are investigated and results in terms of
air velocity and temperature fields inside the channel and wall temperature
profiles, both of the moving and the heated plates, are given. Nusselt numbers,
both accounting and not for the radiative contribution to heat removal,
are also presented. |
