ASME Press Select Proceedings

International Conference on Mechanical and Electrical Technology, 3rd, (ICMET-China 2011), Volumes 1–3

By
Yi Xie
Yi Xie
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ISBN:
9780791859810
No. of Pages:
906
Publisher:
ASME Press
Publication date:
2011

In this paper, a numerical study has been performed to predict the characteristics of laminar flow and thermal fields inside an expansion channel with baffles. The baffles were inclined towards the downstream flow and the angle of inclination was varied from 30° to 90°. The effect of inclination angle, baffles length on the flow and thermal field was investigated for expansion ratio of 1.5 and Reynolds number range up to 200. The governing Navier-Stockes equations were reduced to stream and vorticity equations. The vorticity and energy equations are descretized by using finite difference scheme. The resulting descretised equations of stream function and vorticity were solved by time marching techniques while the stream function with iterative successive overlaxation scheme (SOR). The aim of the present study is to show how an inclined solid baffles aligned on the upper and lower walls of the expansion region can affect the separation and reattachment length and consequently the features of the hydrodynamics and thermal field. The obtained results show that the existence of baffles in the expansion region is considered a controlling factor on separation and reattachment and consequently on the flow and thermal fields. The local rate of heat transfer is increased as the angle of inclination increases. However this increase is up to $a=60°$. Also the results show that the size of separation regions and reattachment lengths are increased as baffles length increases while the friction factor decreases.

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