Calculation of turbulent flow and heat transfer in a porous-baffled channel

This study presents the numerical predictions on the turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics for rectangular channel with porous baffles which are arranged on the bottom and top channel walls in a periodically staggered way. The turbulent governing equations are solved by a control volume-based finite difference method with power-law scheme and the k-epsilon turbulence model associated with wall function to describe the turbulent structure. The velocity and pressure terms of momentum equations are solved by SIMPLE (semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equation) method. The parameters studied include the entrance Reynolds number Re (1x10(4)-5x10(4)), the baffle height (h=10, 20 and 30 mm) and kind of baffles (solid and porous); whereas the baffle spacing S/H are fixed at 1.0 and the working medium is air. The numerical calculations of the flow field indicate that the flow patterns around the porous- and solid-type baffles are entirely different due to different transport phenomena and it significantly influences the local heat transfer coefficient distributions. Relative to the solid-type baffle channel, the porous-type baffle channel has a lower friction factor due to less channel blockage. Concerning the heat transfer effect, both the solid-type and porous-type baffles walls enhanced the heat transfer relative to the smooth channel. It is further found that at the higher baffle height, the level of heat transfer augmentation is nearly the same for the porous-type baffle, the only difference being the Reynolds number dependence. As expected, the centerline-averaged Nusselt number ratio increases with increasing the baffle height because of the flow, acceleration. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.