Augmenting Natural Convection in a Vertical Flow Path Through Transverse Vibrations of an Adiabatic Wall

Abstract

Natural-convection enhancement methods may provide more efficient and effective, low-cost, reliable alternative cooling options for certain operating conditions. In this work, the introduction of locally applied oscillations is explored as a means of improving natural-convection cooling. A simple geometric system consisting of a vertically oriented flow path with one uniformly heated wall and one transversely oscillating, insulated wall is utilized. A finite-volume SIMPLER-based technique is developed to study the system in a transformed “fixed” domain. Analysis over a range of oscillation frequencies and displacements, flow channel length-to-width ratios, and heat rates allows for the examination of the characteristics of the resulting velocity and temperature fields under various operating conditions. The combination of the oscillations, the natural convection, the fluid inertia, and other flow drivers produced up to a 340% increase in the local heat transfer coefficient.

Notes

^a Indicates reference values, R, for modified quantities in Eq. (11).