Convective heat transfer behaviors of power-law fluid in a channel between two parallel plates

Abstract EN

Laminar forced convection heat transfer in a non-Newtonian fluid flow in a channel between two parallel plates has been investigated analytically.

Fully developed laminar velocity distributions obtained by a power-law fluid rheology model were used, and viscous dissipation was taken into account.

The theoretical analysis of the heat transfer is performed under a constant heat flux case.

An important feature of this approach is that it permits an arbitrary distribution of the surrounding medium temperature and an arbitrary velocity distribution of the fluid.

These techniques were verified by a comparison with the existing results.

The effects of the Brinkman number and rheological properties on the distribution of the local Nusselt number have been studied.

It is shown that the Nusselt number strongly depends on the value of power law index.

The Nusselt number sharply decreases in the range of 0 < n < 0.

1.

However, for n > 0.5, the Nusselt number decreases monotonically with the increasing n, and for n > 1, the values of Nusselt number approach a constant value.