PERIODIC-FLOW AND HEAT-TRANSFER USING UNSTRUCTURED MESHES

A numerical scheme has been developed for computing fluid flow and hea t transfer in periodically repeating geometries. Unstructured solution -adaptive meshes are used in a cell-centred finite volume formulation. The SIMPLE algorithm is used for pressure-velocity coupling. For peri odic flows the static pressure is decomposed into a periodic component and one that varies linearly in the streamwise direction. The latter is computed from the imposition of overall mass balance at the periodi c boundary. A subiteration between the periodic pressure correction eq uation and the correction to the linear component is used, For heat tr ansfer a formulation using the physical rather than the scaled tempera ture is employed. The scheme is applied to both laminar and turbulent computations of periodic flow and heat transfer in a variety of heat e xchanger geometries; comparison with published computations and experi mental data is found to be satisfactory. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, L td.