Analysis of heat transfer around bluff bodies with variable inlet turbulent intensity: A numerical simulation

Abstract

In the present study, a numerical simulation is carried out to analyze the effect of turbulent intensity on the flow behavior of flow past two dimensional bluff bodies. Triangular prism, diamond and trapezoidal shaped bodies with the same hydraulic diameter D, a dimensionless length scale are taken into consideration as bluff bodies. The objective of the numerical analysis is to cover cross flow at both turbulent and laminar regime with varying Reynolds number upto 200,000 and inlet intensities ranging between 5% and 40%. The flow medium used is air at a constant Prandtl number. The energy, momentum and continuity equations are dealt with transition SST Model for closure of turbulence. The results obtained through numerical simulation are validated with other published results by researchers and show good agreements. This present study reveals that transition SST Model can be efficiently used to cover both laminar and turbulent flow regimes to estimate the heat transfer. The impact of inlet turbulent intensity on augmentation of heat transfer using bluff bodies has been evaluated. It is observed from the study that the turbulent intensity significantly affects drag coefficient.