ISSN Online: 2688-7231
ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-497-7
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-496-0
Proceedings of the 25th National and 3rd International ISHMT-ASTFE Heat and Mass Transfer Conference (IHMTC-2019)
Natural Convection Cooling of a Stack of Three Horizontal Cylinders in Laminar Regime
Abstract
The present work is intended to investigate the natural convection heat transfer from a stack of three solid horizontal cylinders numerically in a three dimensional computational domain. Simulations were conducted in the laminar flow regime of Rayleigh number spanning in the range (104 ≤ Ra ≤ 108) and length to diameter ratio in the range (0.5 ≤ L/D ≤ 20). The thermal fields are visualized in terms of temperature contours while heat transfer characteristics are elucidated in terms of the average Nusselt number (Nu). The average Nusselt number shows a positive dependence on Ra for all L/D. Furthermore, the average Nu is found to be significantly higher for short cylinders and decreases with increase in L/D up to 15 and remain constant for long cylinders. In the present study, an attempt has been made to compare the present 3D simulation results for the extreme case of L/D = 20 with the 2D numerical results of Rath and Dash [6] in order to justify the use of 2D simulations.