Control of heat transfer in a water filled enclosure with a vibrating side wall

Abstract

In this study, a two dimensional shallow enclosure filled with water is considered. An oscillatory flow field is created by the harmonic vibration of a enclosure side wall. The heat transfer due to the temperature gradient between left and right walls of the enclosure is numerically simulated. In literature, oscillatory driven flow for liquid water is rarely studied. To our best knowledge the present work is the first study which directly simulates the acoustically driven motion of water and associated thermal transport. Here it is important to note that the present investigation focuses on non-zero mean oscillatory flows in liquid water. The fully compressible form of Navier-Stokes equations and an equation of state for liquid water are employed in order to evaluate the flow and thermal fields in the enclosure. To compute the transport phenomenon in the enclosure accurately, liquid water is modeled as a compressible fluid with a suitable equation of state. The governing equations are discritized by using a control volume based, explicit time marching, flux corrected transport algorithm (FCT). The code validation is performed by comparing pressure and particle (flow) velocities with theoretically estimated (based on acoustic relations) values. Both ‘oscillatory’ and pseudo-steady ‘time averaged’ velocity values are computed. According to the results of this study, it can be concluded that the heat transfer in the enclosure is considerably enhanced by oscillatory flow. The results of this study can be a guide for the design of oscillation controlled heat transport tubes. © 2014, Begell House Inc. All rights reserved.