Thermal enhancement in laminar channel flow with a porous block

Abstract

A study of a porous block mounted on a heated wall in a laminar flow channel to enhance convection heat transfer rate was investigated numerically. A numerical method of SIMPLEC is adopted to solve governing equations, as for the energy equation, one-equation thermal model with Van Driest's wall function is considered. The parameters that include porosity epsilon, particle diameter D-p, Reynolds number Re, and blocked ratio HP are studied, and for simulating more realistically, the porosity is taken into consideration as variable. All the non-Darcian effects including the channeling effects, solid boundary effects, and inertial effects are also considered. The effects of the above parameters on the thermal performance of the heated wall are examined in detail. The results indicate that for HP = 0.5 case the thermal performances are enhanced by using a porous block with higher porosity and particle diameter. However, the results are the opposite for HP = 1.0. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.