PARAMETRIC STUDY OF TURBULENT 3-DIMENSIONAL HEAT-TRANSFER OF ARRAYS OF HEATED BLOCKS ENCOUNTERED IN ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT

Periodic fully developed fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are obtained numerically for turbulent flow over three-dimensional arr ays of heated square blocks deployed along one wall of a parallel-plat e duct. This configuration simulates forced convection cooling of elec tronic equipment. The high Reynolds number form of the k-epsilon turbu lence model is used for the computations. The computations are perform ed for the condition of uniform wall temperature, for a wide range of geometric parameters characterizing the array, for a range of Reynolds numbers from 10(4) to 10(5), and for Prandtl number of 0.7. The resul ts show that the friction factor is higher or lower than the values ob tained from an empirical correlation for a parallel-plate duct dependi ng on the geometric parameters and the Reynolds number. The cycle aver aged Nusselt number is also higher or lower than the analytical values for a parallel-plate duct with one wall heated at a constant rate and the other wall insulated depending on the geometric parameters and th e Reynolds number.