Simulation and measurement of enhanced turbulent heat transfer in a channel with periodic ribs on one principal wall

This paper performs a numerical and experimental analysis to investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow behaviour in a rectangular channel flow with streamwise-periodic ribs mounted on one of the principal walls. The k--A PDM turbulence model together with a smoothed hybrid central/skew upstream difference scheme (SCSUDS) and the PISO pressure-velocity coupling algorithm was applied to solving the accelerated, separated and recirculating flows. The real-time holographic interferometry technique was adopted to measure the time-dependent temperature field in the ribbed duct. The predicted fluid flow and temperature field were tested by previous laser-Doppler velocimetry measurements and present holographic interferometry data, and reasonable agreement was achieved. By the examination of the local wall temperature distribution for the uniform wall heat flux (UHF) boundary condition the regions susceptible to the hot spots are identified. Moreover, the study provided the numerical solution to investigate the effect of geometry and flow parameters on the local as well as average heat transfer coefficients. The compact correlation of the average heat transfer coefficient was further developed and accounted for the rib height, rib spacing, and Reynolds number. (Author)