THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF INCLINED NARROW PLATES UNDER NATURAL CONVECTION

Abstract

The natural convection heat transfer in vertical channels with internal obstructions is encountered in many engineering applications such as cooling electronic devices, refrigeration units, heat exchangers, fuel assemblies for nuclear reactors, dry cooling towers, and building ventilation systems. In this work, an accurate 3D airflow geometry model of a vertical thin plate is used for a vertical thin plate to be modeled using PTC Creo Parametric. The main areas of study are the thermal and CFD calculations at two Reynolds numbers, 2 × 10⁶ and 4 × 10⁶, and four inclination angles of plates (0°, 30°, 45°, and 60°). The thermal characteristics of the thin vertical plates made of steel, aluminum and copper are studied for different heat transfer coefficients. At the chosen Reynolds numbers, the heat transfer coefficients are calculated by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Thermal analysis is employed to determine the heat flux and distribution on various materials of plates; computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is employed to estimate critical thermal and flow parameters such as mass flow rate, pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient and heat transfer rate. Our numerical simulations and performance evaluation is done using ANSYS, and model creation and preparation in 3D is done using PTC Creo Parametric. Keywords: Keywords— Types of convection, Natural convection, inclined plates, copper material.