Open Access

ARTICLE

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF NATURAL CONVECTION IN INTERNALLY FINNED HORIZONTAL ANNULI

Quanfu Gao^a,b , Kun Zhang^a,b,*, Liang Bi Wang^a,b

a School of Mechanical Engineering, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730070, China
b Key Laboratory of Railway Vehicle Thermal Engineering of MOE, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730070, China

* Corresponding Author: Email: .

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2020, 14, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.14.29

Abstract

Detailed numerical analysis is presented for natural convection heat transfer in internally finned horizontal annuli. Governing equations are discretized using the finite volume method, and solved using SIMPLE algorithm with Quick scheme. The results show that the flow and heat transfer can reach steady state when the Rayleigh number is below 2×10⁴. When the Rayleigh number is greater than 3×10⁴ , two different types of numerical solutions under the same parameters can be obtained for different initial conditions. The critical Rayleigh numbers with two different initial conditions are different from steady to unsteady solutions. The oscillatory flow undergoes several bifurcations and ultimately evolves to a chaotic flow as the Rayleigh numbers increase.

---

Keywords

---