Numerical simulation of natural convection between two elliptical cylinders using DQ method

In this paper, natural convective heat transfer between two horizontal, elliptic cylinders is numerically studied using the differential quadrature (DQ) method. The governing equations are taken to be in the vorticity-stream function formulation. To apply the DQ method, the coordinate transformation is performed. An elliptic function is used, which makes the coordinate transformation from the physical domain to the computational domain be set up by an analytical expression. The present method was validated by comparing its numerical results with available publication data and very good agreement has been achieved. A systematic study is conducted for the analysis of flow and thermal fields at different eccentricities and angular positions. It was found that the position of the major axis of the inner ellipse takes effect on the streamlines, and very little effect on the average Nusselt number. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.