Calculation of the convective heat transfer coefficient and cooling kinetics of an individual fig fruit

A methodology for determination of the convective heat transfer coefficient, h _H, is proposed for fruits with spherical shape, using numerical simulation and experimental data of the temperature within the fruit in the course of its cooling. In the proposed methodology, the position of the thermocouple inside the fruit is assumed to be unknown, and can be obtained through several simulations, supposing different positions for this sensor. The position of the thermocouple is then determined through analyses of the chi-squares of the simulations, which enabled to calculate h _H. The proposed methodology was applied for an individual fig fruit, and the cooling kinetics was described in details.     

Conjugate Phase Change Heat Transfer in an Inclined Compound Cavity Partially Filled with a Porous Medium: A Deformed Mesh Approach

In this paper, the melting process of a PCM inside an inclined compound enclosure partially filled with a porous medium is theoretically addressed using a novel deformed mesh method. The sub-domain area of the compound enclosure is made of a porous layer and clear region. The right wall of the enclosure is adjacent to the clear region and is subject to a constant temperature of T_c. The left wall, which is connected to the porous layer, is thick and thermally conductive. The thick wall is partially subject to the hot temperature of T_h. The remaining borders of the enclosure are well insulated. The governing equations for flow and heat transfer, including the phase change effects and conjugate heat transfer at the thick wall, are introduced and transformed into a non-dimensional form. A deformed grid method is utilized to track the phase change front in the solid and liquid regions. The melting front movement is controlled by the Stefan condition. The finite element method, along with Arbitrary Eulerian–Lagrangian (ALE) moving grid technique, is employed to solve the non-dimensional governing equations. The modeling approach and the accuracy of the utilized numerical approach are verified by comparison of the results with several experimental and numerical studies, available in the literature. The effect of conjugate wall thickness, inclination angle, and the porous layer thickness on the phase change heat transfer of PCM is investigated. The outcomes show that the rates of melting and heat transfer are enhanced as the thickness of the porous layer increases. The melting rate is the highest when the inclination angle of the enclosure is 45°. An increase in the wall thickness improves the melting rate.

     

Turbulent forced convection in a helically coiled square duct with one uniform temperature and three adiabatic walls

In this study, effects of geometrical parameters on the average convection heat transfer characteristics in helical square ducts were investigated both experimentally and numerically. The inner wall of the helical square duct was uniformly temperatured, and the top, bottom, and outer walls were adiabatic. The Renormalization Group (RNG) k–ε turbulence model was used to simulate turbulent flow and heat transfer. The governing equations were solved by a finite volume method. Numerical results were found to be in good agreement with the presented experimental data. The new correlation was proposed for the average heat transfer coefficient on the inner wall of the helical square duct. The results showed that the ratio of pitch to coil radius b/R has no obvious effect on the inner wall convective heat transfer coefficient but the ratio of hydraulic radius to coil radius a/R has considerable effect.     

Multiscale simulation of flow and heat transfer of nanofluid with lattice Boltzmann method

Based on the lattice Boltzmann (LB) approach, a novel hybrid method has been proposed for getting insight into the microscale characteristics of the multicomponent flow of nanofluid. In this method, the whole computational domain is divided into two regions in which different-sized meshes are involved for simulation (fine mesh and coarse mesh). The multicomponent LB method is adopted in the fine mesh region, and the single-component LB approach is applied to the coarse mesh region where the nanofluid is treated as a mixed single-component fluid. The conservation principles of mass, momentum and energy are used to derive a hybrid scheme across the different scaled regions. Numerical simulation is carried out for the Couette flow and convective heat transfer in a parallel plate channel to validate the hybrid method. The computational results indicate that by means of the present method, not only the microscopic characteristics of the nanofluid flow can be simulated, but also the computational efficiency can be remarkably improved compared with the pure multicomponent LB method.     

Computational and experimental studies of convective fluid motion and heat transfer in inclined non-rectangular enclosures

Computational and experimental studies of the fluid motion and heat transfer characteristics of an incompressible fluid contained in a non-rectangular inclined enclosure are described in this paper. The enclosure has two 45° inclined side walls one of which was heated and the other cooled. The remaining two sides of the enclosure are parallel and insulated. The enclosure was rotated about the long axis in steps of 30° through 360°. Experiments were performed to study the effects of Rayleigh number, aspect ratios and orientation of the enclosure. The computational method uses a mesh transformation technique coupled with the introduction of ‘false transient’ parameters for the steady state solution of the problem. The experimental method uses smoke for flow visualization studies. With aspect ratios of 3 and 6, the results indicate that the heat transfer and fluid motion within the enclosure is a strong function of both the Rayleigh number and the cavity orientation angle. A minimum and a maximum mean Nusselt number occurred as the angle of inclination was increased from 0 to 360°. A transition in the mode of circulation occurred at the angle corresponding to the minimum or maximum rate of heat transfer. Stream lines and isotherms are presented for the most representative cases     

A novel Cartesian cut cell solver for incompressible viscous flow in irregular domains

A Cartesian cut cell solver with solution‐based adaptive mesh refinement is developed for simulating viscous, incompressible flows with arbitrary complex geometries. The cut cells are automatically generated using Volume CAD (VCAD), a framework for storing geometric and material attribute data. Unlike earlier cut cell methods, this solver organizes the cutting patterns into only six categories and further subdivides the resulting pentagon into two quadrilaterals, such that mesh data can be stored by uniform data structure and the post‐processing of flow data can be handled conveniently. A novel method is proposed to treat minuscule cut cells without the process of cell merging. A collocated finite volume method, which can be used even when multiple cell shapes and orthogonal and non‐orthogonal grids exist in the decomposition, is employed to discretize the Navier–Stokes equations. A modified SIMPLE‐based smoothing pressure correction scheme is applied in this cut cell method to suppress checkerboard pressure oscillations caused by collocated arrangement. The solver is first used to simulate a channel flow to demonstrate its calculation accuracy expressed with L₁ and L_∞ norm errors and then the method is utilized to solve three benchmark problems of flow and heat transfer within irregular domains to verify its feasibility, efficiency, accuracy and potential in engineering applications. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

非均质材料热传导问题的扩展有限元法

针对非均质材料,提出了以导热系数为基本参数的热传导扩展有限元法。划分网格时不需要考虑材料界面的存在,因此网格的形成可以大大地简化,且可以获得高质量的网格。不含材料界面的单元,其温度场函数将退化为常规有限元的函数。含材料界面的单元,采用基于水平集的加强函数加强常规温度的近似,加强函数用于模拟界面。数值算例结果体现了该方法...     

Numerical simulation of the modulated flow pattern for vertical upflows by the phase separation concept

The multiphase heat transfer could be enhanced by creating thin liquid film on the wall. The phase separation concept is called due to the separated flow paths of liquid and gas over the tube cross section to yield thin liquid film. Our proposed heat transfer tube consists of an annular region close to the wall and a core region, interfaced by a suspending mesh cylinder in the tube. The heat transfer tube is a multiscale system with micron scale of mesh pores, miniature scale of annular region and macroscale of tube diameter and length. Great effort has been made to link from micron scale to macroscale. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method simulates air/water two-phase flow for vertical upflow. The three-dimensional system was successfully converted to a two-dimensional one by using three equivalent criteria for mesh pores. The non-uniform base grid generation and dynamic grid adaption method capture the bubble interface. The numerical results successfully reproduce our experimental results. The numerical findings identify the following mechanisms for the enhanced heat transfer: (a) counter-current flow exists with upward flow in the annular region and downward flow in the core region; (b) void fractions are exact zero in the core region and higher in the annular region; (c) the liquid film thicknesses are decreased to 1/6–1/3 of those in the bare tube section; (d) the gas–liquid mixture travels much faster in the annular region than in the bare tube; (e) three-levels of liquid circulation exists: meter-scale bulk liquid circulation, moderate-scale liquid circulation around a single-elongated-ring-slug-bubble, and microliquid circulation following the ring-slug-bubble tails. These liquid circulations promote the fluid mixing over the whole tube length and within the radial direction. The modulated parameters of void fractions, velocities and liquid film thicknesses in the annular region and three-levels of liquid circulation are greatly beneficial for the multiphase heat transfer enhancement.     

Enhancement of pool boiling heat transfer in a horizontal water layer through surface roughness and screen coverage

An experimental investigation was carried out to study the augmentation of heat transfer in saturated pool boiling of a liquid water layer on a heated horizontal stainless steel plate by roughing the surface and/or covering it with a single layer of stainless steel screen. The results were presented in terms of the boiling curves. Effects of various parameters – the surface roughness, liquid level and size of the stainless steel mesh on the boiling heat transfer were examined in detail. The measured data clearly indicated that a lowering of the liquid level from 60 to 5?mm in water depth causes heat transfer reduction. Roughing the surface was found to sig- nificantly enhance the heat transfer. Use a layer of metal screen to cover the heated surface was shown to substantially augment the heat transfer especially for a shallow water layer if the mesh size is comparable with the bubble departure diameter. Covering the rough surface with the metal mesh, however, reduced the heat transfer.     

A tube-by-tube reduction method for simultaneous heat and mass transfer characteristics for plain fin-and-tube heat exchangers in dehumidifying conditions

This study proposed a new method, namely a tube-by-tube reduction method to analyze the performance of fin-and-tube heat exchangers having plain fin configuration under dehumidifying conditions. The mass transfer coefficients which seldom reported in the open literature, are also presented. For fully wet conditions, it is found that the reduced results for both sensible heat transfer performance and the mass transfer performance by the present method are insensitive to change of inlet humidity. Unlike those tested in fully dry condition, the sensible heat transfer performance under dehumidification is comparatively independent of fin pitch. The ratio of the heat transfer characteristic to mass transfer characteristic (h_c,o/h_d,o C_p,a) is in the range of 0.6~1.0, and the ratio is insensitive to change of fin spacing at low Reynolds number. However, a slight drop of the ratio of (h_c,o/h_d,o C_p,a) is seen with the decrease of fin spacing when the Reynolds number is sufficient high. This is associated with the more pronounced influence due to condensate removal by the vapor shear. Correlations are proposed to describe the heat and mass performance for the present plate fin configurations. These correlations can describe 89% of the Chilton Colburn j-factor of the heat transfer (j_h) within 15% and can correlate 81% of the Chilton Colburn j-factor of the mass transfer (j_m) within 20%.     

Development and Application of a Novel Technique for Direct Heat Flux Measurements in Turbomachinery Flows

The high performance and efficiency of modern gas turbines are only possible with temperatures inside the engine exceeding the allowed material temperatures in some areas by several hundred degrees. Therefore effective cooling methods are one of the key factors for the success of these engines. In order to achieve reliable predictions of the heat load of rotor or stator blades numerous research activities were performed to understand the nature of heat transfer in complex unsteady flows. Even numerical methods have made significant progress in recent years detailed experimental data are still necessary for validation and further development of the engines and the design tools. Here a new method to directly measure the heat flux at the material surface and accurately determine the heat transfer coefficienth is presented. The new sensor is based on the anisotropic characteristics of single crystals and allows the determination of the time varying heat flux on the surface of a model turbine airfoil. This feature is of special interest to study the influence of periodically disturbed flow conditions on the heat transfer characteristics of cooled turbine blades. The working principle of an anisotropic heat flux (AHF) sensor is briefly described together with the design of the actual sensor used in this study. Prior to the application of the sensor in a cascade test rig, comprehensive test of the sensor, the electronics and the data acquisition system were performed using a pulsed laser beam as heat source. To test the sensor under realistic conditions a large number of sensor was installed in a test blade and heat transfer measurements were performed in a cascade test rig equipped with a spoke-wheel wake generator. The results showed good agreement in the time mean results compared with standard techniques. Additionally time resolved data could be extracted from the sensor signals providing detailed information on the unsteady heat transfer characteristics and boundary layer development. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The direct simulation Monte Carlo method using unstructured adaptive mesh and its application

The implementation of an adaptive mesh‐embedding (h‐refinement) scheme using unstructured grid in two‐dimensional direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is reported. In this technique, local isotropic refinement is used to introduce new mesh where the local cell Knudsen number is less than some preset value. This simple scheme, however, has several severe consequences affecting the performance of the DSMC method. Thus, we have applied a technique to remove the hanging node, by introducing the an‐isotropic refinement in the interfacial cells between refined and non‐refined cells. Not only does this remedy increase a negligible amount of work, but it also removes all the difficulties presented in the originals scheme. We have tested the proposed scheme for argon gas in a high‐speed driven cavity flow. The results show an improved flow resolution as compared with that of un‐adaptive mesh. Finally, we have used triangular adaptive mesh to compute a near‐continuum gas flow, a hypersonic flow over a cylinder. The results show fairly good agreement with previous studies. In summary, the proposed simple mesh adaptation is very useful in computing rarefied gas flows, which involve both complicated geometry and highly non‐uniform density variations throughout the flow field. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Laminar free convection heat transfer from isothermal convex bodies of arbitrary shape: a new dynamic model

Calculation of free convection from bodies of arbitrary shape has been investigated previously. The Body Gravity Function (BGF) which accounts for the geometry of each body shape was considered to be a constant value. In the present study, it is shown that BGF is not a constant value in a wide range of Rayleigh number. Instead, its value changes as Rayleigh number increases. Therefore, by analytical modeling of Dynamic BGF and derivation of a new parameter called Body Fluid Function, a novel method is proposed to calculate laminar free convection heat transfer from isothermal convex bodies of arbitrary shape. Results for 24 different body shapes are compared with the available experimental and numerical data. Excellent agreement shows that the present simple method accurately predicts laminar free convection heat transfer from isothermal convex bodies of arbitrary shape in the whole range of laminar flow and for fluids of any Prandtl number.     

A method for computing three dimensional flows using non-orthogonal boundary-fitted co-ordinates

For three-dimensional fluid flows in complex geometries, it is convenient to make predictions using a non-orthogonal boundary-fitted mesh. The present paper describes an economical method of solving the equations of motion for two and three dimensional problems using such meshes. The locations on the mesh at which the depenent variables are calculated, and the methods used to solve the equations, are key issues in the development of a successful algorithm; these are discussed in the present paper. Results obtained when the proposed method is applied to several problems are also described. The method is intended for flows in which compressibility effects do not dominate.     

Heat and mass transfer characteristics of simulated high moisture flue gases

The heat transfer process occurring in a condensing heat exchanger where noncondensible gases are dominant in volume is different from the condensation heat transfer of the water vapor containing small amount of noncondensible gases. In the process the mass transfer due to the vapor condensation contributes an important part to the total heat transfer. In this paper, the Colburn-Hougen method is introduced to analyze the heat and mass transfer process when the water vapor entrained in a gas stream condenses into water on the tube wall. The major influential factors of the convective-condensation heat transfer coefficient are found as follows: the partial pressure of the vapor p _v , the temperature of the outer tube wall T _w , the mixture temperature T _g , Re and Pr. A new dimensionless number Ch, which is defined as condensation factor, has been proposed by dimensional analysis. In order to determine the relevant constants and investigate the convection-condensation heat and mass transfer characteristics of the condensing heat exchanger of a gas fired condensing boiler, a single row plain tube heat exchanger is designed, and experiments have been conducted with vapor-air mixture used to simulate flue gases. The experimental results show that the convection-condensation heat transfer coefficient is 1.52 times higher than that of the forced convection without condensation. Based on the experimental data, the normalized formula for convention-condensation heat transfer coefficient is obtained. A heat transfer area m² - Ch condensation factor - c _p specific heat at constant pressure, J/(kg·K) - G mass flux Kg/(m²·s) - h heat transfer coefficient W/(m²·K) - J J-factor - Nu Nusselt number - pa pressure - Pr Prandtl number - Q heat transfer rate - q heat flux W/m² - r latent heat, kJ/kg - Re Reynolds number - Sc Schmidt number - T temperature, C or K - heat conductivity m W/(m·K) - density, kg·m³ - g gas - h moistened hot air - i interface - v vapor - w water     

Optimization of mesh screen for enhancing jet impingement heat transfer

The variations of flow structure and heat transfer characteristics of impinging air jets with respect to mesh solidity are compared for two mesh screen locations at small nozzle-to-plate spacings. Results show that the uniform incoming flow structure produces higher heat transfer rates in the impingement region. The heat transfer enhancement largely depends on nozzle-to-plate spacing, mesh solidity, and jet Reynolds number. The mechanism of heat transfer enhancement is analyzed in light of the field synergy principle.     

A study on the extension of a VOF/PLIC based method to a curvilinear co-ordinate system

The conventional volume-of-fluid method has the potential to deal with large free surface deformation on a fixed Cartesian grid. However, when free-surface flows are within or over complex geometries of industrial relevance, such as free-surface flows over offshore oil platforms, it is advantageous to extend the method originally written in Cartesian forms into non-Cartesian forms. In the present study, an algorithm similar to the algorithm described by Rudman in 1997 is proposed for use with curvilinear co-ordinates. This extension results in the ability to model complex geometries which could not be modelled using the original algorithm. Excellent agreement between the solutions obtained on both orthogonal and non-orthogonal meshes is achieved, although in general the L ₁ error, based on the exact solution, on the non-orthogonal mesh is slightly higher than that on the orthogonal mesh. The extended fluid flow solving capacity of the present method is demonstrated through its application to a non-orthogonal Rayleigh–Taylor instability problem.     

Lattice‐Boltzmann and meshless point collocation solvers for fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer

The applicability and performance of the lattice‐Boltzmann (LB) and meshless point collocation methods as CFD solvers in flow and conjugate heat transfer processes are investigated in this work. Lid‐driven cavity flow and flow in a slit with an obstacle including heat transfer are considered as case studies. A comparison of the computational efficiency accuracy of the two methods with that of a finite volume method as implemented in a commercial package (ANSYS CFX, ANSYS Inc., Canonsburg, PA) is made. Utilizing the analogy between heat and mass transfer, an advection–diffusion LB model was adopted to simulate the heat transfer part of the slit flow problem followed by a rigorous mapping of the mass transfer variables to the heat transfer quantities of interest, thus circumventing the need for a thermal LB model. Direct comparison among the results of the three methods revealed excellent agreement over a wide range of Reynolds and Prandtl number values. Furthermore, an integrated computational scheme is proposed, utilizing the rapid convergence of the LB model in the flow part of the conjugate heat transfer problem with that of the meshless collocation method for the heat transfer part. The meshless treatment remains sufficiently rapid even for conduction‐controlled processes in contrast to the LB method, which is very rapid in the convection‐controlled case only. A single, common computational grid, composed of regularly distributed nodes is used, saving significant computational and coding time and ensuring convergence of the discrete Laplacian operator in the heat transfer part of the computations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive finite element method for forced convection

This paper presents an adaptive finite element method to solve forced convective heat transfer. Solutions are obtained in primitive variables using a high-order finite element approximation on unstructured grids. Two general-purpose error estimators are developed to analyse finite element solutions and to determine the characteristics of an improved mesh which is adaptively regenerated by the advancing front method. The adaptive methodology is validated on a problem with a known analytical solution. The methodology is then applied to heat transfer predictions for two cases of practical interest. Predictions of the Nusselt number compare well with measurements and constitute an improvement over previous results. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

竖直流道宽度对气泡运动行为影响的数值模拟

用数值方法模拟了竖直通道宽度对气泡在液体中的非定常运动、变形以及传热特性的影响。在这个模拟中,界面跟踪采用了VOF方法,并采用PL IC进行界面重构。主流场计算采用有限容积方法将控制方程离散,其中扩散项采用中心差分格式,对流项采用一阶迎风格式。用成熟的S IM PLE算法求解N-S方程的速度与压力的耦合问题。引入CSF模型处理运动界面的表面张力。利用所编制的程序计算了竖直流道中的单个气泡的形状、运动特性以及气泡内外流场与传热特性,并对竖直通道宽度在不同情况下,对气泡的形状、运动特性以及传热特性进行了进一步的研究。得到了一系列有价值的结果,并与实验结果比较。表明数值模拟结果与实验结果吻合的较好。