Computational analysis of conjugate heat transfer in a 2D rectangular channel with mounted obstacles using lattice Boltzmann method

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer in a 2D channel using lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). In this work, fluid flow and heat transfer are studied for the Reynolds numbers varying between 250 and 1000. The working fluid in the simulations is air with the Prandtl number of 0.72. At the Reynolds number of 600, the effect of different conductivity ratio (1, 10, 100, 400) between solid and fluid are investigated. Furthermore, at this Reynolds number, the distance between obstacles for the conductivity ratio of 10 is evaluated. The results show that any increase in Reynolds number leads to a heat transfer improvement. Moreover, increase in the conductivity ratio leads to an isothermal surface and enhanced heat transfer. The more the distance between the obstacles, the better the heat transfer rate. The results obtained from LBM are in good agreement with experimental and conventional computational fluid dynamics methods.