Effect of inner boundaries geometry on natural convection heat transfer in horizontal annuli

Abstract EN

An analytical modeling of natural convection in physically-based analysis is developed for investigate free convective heat transfer in horizontal eccentric annulus between a circular outer cylinder and heated different shape inner envelope with used four models of the shapes of the inner cross section of (circular, triangular, square and hexagon inner boundary).

The main objective of this paper was taking a composite model based on asymptotic solutions for three limiting cases : pure conduction, laminar boundary layer convection and transition flow convection.

Laminar conditions up to Rayleigh number RaPi of 5 × 104 were investigated.

By using data from MATLAB simulations for a wide range of two cylinder temperature difference in order to study the effects of annulus diameter ratio, Rayleigh number, and the cross section geometries of inner cylinder on the Nusslte number and the ratio of thermal conductivity.

The numerical result illustrated for the circular the increasing the Rayleigh number leading to slightly increasing the non-dimensional Nusslte number with various value of annulus diameter ratio and when used the high annulus perimeter ratio (Po / Pi ) about (4.5, 2.6, 1.6 and 1.175).

There is rapid increasing in the non-dimensional ratio of thermal conductivity with increasing the Rayleigh number at the high values of (Po / Pi), and the result showed that the non-dimensional ratio of thermal conductivity and the Nusslte number values of the (triangular, square and hexagon) less than in the case of circular inner boundary, but the hexagon model showed the Nusslte number more that than in the (triangular and square).

the mathematical results compared with model developed by pervious numerical the model and data are in good agreement, with an average RMS difference of 10.6 % for the circular annulus of dimensional Nusselt number (NuPi) and less than 4.9 % and 9.8% for the square inner geometry non dimensional ratio thermal conductivity.