Date of Award

4-2006

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. HoSung Lee

Second Advisor

Dr. Christopher Cho

Third Advisor

Dr. Bade Shrestha

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The phenomenon of turbulent forced convection in the entry region of a rectangular duct was investigated computationally using commercial CFD software, FLUENT. The Standard k-ε turbulence model from FLUENT was used to model turbulence in the 20mm high x 30mm wide cross-sectional rectangular duct. The operating fluid used for the three-dimensional CFD study was water at an inlet temperature of 90° C, with the velocities ranging from 0.5 m/s to 2 m/s, at 1 atm pressure. A constant heat flux was applied to the base of the rectangular channel with the other flow walls insulated. The heat flux ranged from 0 to 20,0000 W/m2 The effect of different velocities and heat flux values on the heat transfer coefficient and the surface temperature is analyzed. The variation of Nusselt number and wall temperature along the heater surface for different heat fluxes is provided. The thermal boundary layer development for different heat fluxes is also studied using FLUENT. The 3-D numerical results showed good agreement with the available experimental data. A two-dimensional CFD analysis was performed on the given rectangular duct using air as the operating fluid and the correlation to mathematically predict the turbulent forced convection in this 2-D flow geometry is also given.

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