ANALYSIS OF FORCED-CONVECTION ENHANCEMENT IN A CHANNEL USING POROUS BLOCKS

This work presents a detailed investigation of forced convection enhan cement in a channel using multiple emplaced porous blocks. The Brinkma n-Forchheimer-extended Darcy model is used to characterize the flowfie ld inside the porous regions in order to account for the inertia effec ts as well as the viscous effects. Solution of the coupled governing e quations for the porous/fluid composite system is obtained using a str eam function-vorticity approach. Important fundamental and practical r esults have been presented and discussed. These results thoroughly doc ument the dependence of the streamline, isotherm, and local Nusselt nu mber distributions on the governing parameters defining the problem, s uch as the Reynolds number, Darcy number, Prandtl number, inertial par ameter, and two pertinent geometric parameters. An in-depth discussion of the formation and variation of the recirculation caused by the por ous medium is presented, and the existence of an optimum porous matrix is demonstrated. It is shown that altering some parametric values can have significant and interesting effects on both the flow pattern as well as heat transfer characteristics.