Effect of Top Wall Configuration on Unsteady Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Sinusoidal Wavy Channels

Abstract

In the present work, three-dimensional numerical investigations are carried out to study the influence of top wall confinement on unsteady flow and heat transfer characteristics of sinusoidal wavy channels. Different channel confinements considered in the present study are channels having sinusoidal bottom wall and plane, in-phase, and out-of-phase configurations of the top wall. Computations are carried out by using open-source computational fluid dynamics package OpenFOAM. Numerical results are validated against the experimental results reported in the literature. The onset of unsteady flow and three-dimensionality in the channel has been identified by monitoring velocity at a point in the domain. Steady and unsteady flow characteristics have been presented with the help of temporal variation of velocity signals, phase space trajectories, power spectral density, instantaneous streamlines, and iso Q-surfaces. Heat transfer characteristics have been presented with the help of instantaneous Nusselt number contours and time-averaged values of Nusselt number.

Acknowledgment

Authors would like to acknowledge High-Performance Computing Environment (HPCE), IIT Madras, for providing computational resources.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sankaravarrier Harikrishnan

Sankaravarrier Harikrishnan completed his Ph.D. from Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India in July 2019. He works in the field of vortex enhanced heat transfer and multiphase flow.

Shaligram Tiwari

Shaligram Tiwari is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. His research interests are flow transitions and instabilities, heat and mass transfer, thermocapillary convection, vortex dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics.