Open Access

ARTICLE

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF MIXED CONVECTIVE FLOW OVER TRIANGULARLY ARRANGED CYLINDERS

O. M. Oyewola^a,b,* , O. S. Ismail^b , M. O. Olasindeb , O. O. Ajide^b

a School of Mechanical Engineering, Fiji National University, Suva, Fiji
b Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
* Corresponding author. Email: olanrewaju.oyewola@fnu.ac.fj

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2022, 18, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.18.30

Abstract

In this work, attempt is made to investigate the effect of cylindrical arrangement on the thermal and flow fields within the mixed convective regime for different values of Reynolds number within the study zone. Constructal design was used to design the flow geometric. Two-dimensional unsteady laminar flow equations with buoyancy force were solved numerically using finite element technique implemented on ANSYS FLUENT software. The study showed an optimised arrangement of 50% difference in coefficient of drag and 10% difference in Nusselt number within the geometrical arrangement variation. The effect of geometric arrangement is pronounced at low Ri than at high Ri. The result shows that buoyancy force and inertia force have significant effect on the Nusselt number and drag coefficient, respectively. Evidently, wake formation and vortex shedding variation with flow regimes both at the local and general levels may render the flow classification based on Richardson number objectionable especially with the present flow conditions.

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Keywords

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