Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Over Circular Cyclinders in Cross Flow

Abstract

An extensive numerical study is conducted to determine cross flow of air (Pr=0.71) around isothermal cylinders of circular crosssection in arrangements such as single cylinder, inline arrays and staggered arrays. Commercial software package FLUENT is used to solve the fluid flow and energy equations assuming the flow over the cylinder is two dimensional, steady, viscous and incompressible bounded in a duct, as low Reynolds number is being investigated. The width of the duct is kept 20 times the diameter of the cylinder so that the effects of channel blockage can be avoided. The effects of radiation are also neglected in this study. Variations in properties such as local Nusselt number, average Nusselt number, local pressure coefficient and local skin friction coefficient are presented around the cylinders at Reynolds number ranging from 40 to 10,000. The results are compared with analytical, experimental and numerical data from previous literature and are found to be in excellent agreement. It has been found that heat transfer from a staggered array of cylinders is slightly higher than an inline array of cylinders.