Forced convective heat transfer in a plate channel filled with solid particles

Abstract

A numerical study of fluid flow and convective heat transfer in a plate channel filled with solid (metallic) particles is presented in this paper. The study uses the thermal equilibrium model and a newly developed numerical model which does not assume idealized local thermal equilibrium between the solid particles and the fluid. The numerical simulation results are compared with the experimental data in reference [2]. The paper investigates the effects of the assumption of local thermal equilibrium versus non-thermal equilibrium, the thermal conductivity of the solid particles and the particle diameter on convective heat transfer. For the conditions studied, the convective heat transfer and the temperature field assuming local thermal equilibrium are much different from that for the non-thermal equilibrium assumption when the difference between the solid and fluid thermal conductivities is large. The relative values of the thermal conductivities of the solid particles and the fluid also have a profound effect on the temperature distribution in the channel. The pressure drop decreases as the particle diameter increases and the convective heat transfer coefficient may decrease or increase as the particle diameter increases depending on the values of ɛ, λ s , λ f , λ d , α v , ρ u .