NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF MIXED CONVECTIVE FLOW IN A FINNED HORIZOTAL CHANNEL

Abstract

A numerical simulation for mixed convective airflow through a horizontal finned channel was carried out by means of a MATLAB® code. Steady state and two dimensional conditions are considered for solving the problem. The discretization technique used was the finite volume and the SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Pressure Linked Equations) algorithm was used to link the pressure and velocity fields inside the computational domain. The simulation was run for Re=50, 100 and 200. The heat transfer problem was solved for a temperature difference between the hot wall and the fluid temperature at the inlet of 50 and 70. As a result, the fluid flow structures, the flow velocity and temperature fields as well as the recirculation zones adjacent to the fines are shown. Local Nusselt along the channel is presented. The Nusselt and the recirculation zones increase when the Reynolds is augmented.