TWO-DIMENSIONAL FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF FORCED CONVECTION FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN A LAMINAR CHANNEL FLOW

摘要

In this paper heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics in a channel has been theoretically investigated. In this study, FEM is employed to analyze a fluid flow inside a channel and then solve for the heat flow transfer through the same channel. The fluid flow is expressed by partial differential equation (Poissons equation). While, heat transfer is analyzed using the energy equation. The Navier Stokes equations along with the energy equation have been solved by using simple technique. The domain is discretized using 2626 elements and that corresponds to a total number of nodes 2842. The channel has a constant heat flux at the two walls and the three dimensional numerical simulations. Numerical solutions were obtained using commercial software Ansys Fluent. The working fluid was air (Pr=0.7). The local Nusselt numbers are obtained, which can be used in estimation of flow and heat transfer performance in a channel In addition, local Nusselt numbers, velocity magnitude and temperature profiles, and pressure profiles are analyzed. Results showed that both fluid flow and temperature flow are influenced significantly with changing entrance velocity. The overall objective of this paper is to study the flow characteristics and heat transfer analysis inside a channel while increasing entrance velocity.