ADAPTIVE REMESHING FOR CONVECTIVE HEAT-TRANSFER WITH VARIABLE FLUID PROPERTIES

This article presents an adaptive finite element method based on remes hing to solve incompressible viscous flow problems for which fluid pro perties present a strong temperature dependence. Solutions are obtaine d in primitive variables using a highly accurate finite element approx imation on unstructured grids. Two general purpose error estimators ar e presented, which take into account the temperature dependence of flu id properties. The methodology is applied to a problem of practical in terest: the thermal convection of corn syrup in an enclosure with loca lized heating. Predictions are in good agreement with experimental mea surements. The method leads to improved accuracy and reliability of fi nite element predictions.