Evaluation of free convection cooling and entropy efficiency in a porous W-shaped cavity using RSM and CFD approaches

Abstract

The cooling and entropy efficiencies of natural convection inside cavities within fully saturated metal foam play a vital role in thermal engineering applications systems. The current study employed response surface methodology (RSM) coupled with ANSYS FLUENT-CFD for a two-dimensional W-shaped cavity, which has not been examined previously. Several effective physical factors were considered, including the aspect ratio (W = h/H = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8) and the applied temperature variation (ΔT = T_h − T_c = 10, 20, 30 and 40 K). Additionally, the thermal performance (Nu_mW/Nu_mO and Q_W/Q_O) and entropy generation (EG_W/EG_O) improved under the optimum design of pore per inch (10 ≤ PPI ≤ 30), the number of wave amplitude (1 ≤ n ≤ 3) and aspect ratio (0.2 ≤ W ≤ 0.8) utilizing both RSM and CFD. The results showed that the optimal design of natural convection within a fully saturated metal foam W-shaped cavity at PPI = 10, n = 3 and W = 0.8 resulted in enhancements of approximately 2.875 times for both Nu_mW/Nu_mO and Q_W/Q_O while maintaining reasonable EG_W/EG_O at 1.193 times. Moreover, the novelty aspect of this research lies in the successful achievement of multi-objectives improving Nu_mW/Nu_mO, Q_W/Q_O and EG_W/EG_O by applying the RSM approach in combination with ANSYS FLUENT-CFD. Thus, the optimal working procedure of RSM and CFD is aligned with the desired goals, as the cooling and entropy efficiencies of the porous W-shaped cavity are considered acceptable and satisfactory.

Keywords:

• Multi-objective methodology
• natural convection improvement
• Nusselt number maximization
• porous W-shaped cavity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).