The Effect of Conductive and Non-Conductive Flow Diverters on Free Convection Heat Transfer From a Vertical Array of Horizontal Isothermal Cylinders

In this paper, a numerical solution method (finite volume) has been applied to investigate the effect of conductive and non-conductive flow diverters on free convection heat transfer from a vertical array of horizontal isothermal cylinders. Cylinder vertical spacings (center to center distance = S) of 2D, 3D and 4D has been investigated, which D is the cylinder diameter. Rectangular plate diverters have been placed between cylinders. Diverters are tilted at different angels with respect to horizon. The calculation has been done for various Rayleigh numbers based on the cylinder-diameter in the range between 10³ and 10⁴. The results show that in the case of 2D cylinder spacing, both conductive and non-conductive flow diverters decrease the heat transfer rate of cylinders at low Rayleigh numbers. However, as the distance between the cylinders increases to 3D and 4D, adding flow diverters leads to an increase in the heat transfer rate of the array. Also, in the cases of 3D and 4D spacing, the use of non-conductive flow diverters results in more increase in heat transfer rate in comparison with the rate of heat transfer resulted by applying conductive diverters.