Influence of Entrance Geometry and Thermal Boundary Conditions on Heat Transfer in a Rectangular Channel with 45 Deg Angled Ribs on One or Two Principal Walls

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to numerically investigate the influence of the entrance geometry and thermal boundary conditions on the local and averaged heat transfer coefficient in a ribbed rectangular channel with an aspect ratio of 5. Ribs, angled at 45°, were periodically deployed on one or two opposite sides, while the remaining walls of the rectangular channel were assumed to be smooth and unheated. The effect of entrance conditions was addressed by considering either a smooth or a ribbed unheated section upstream of the ribbed heated section. The effect of the thermal boundary condition was studied by considering a uniform heat flux imposed at the inter-rib region, or at the inter-rib and the rib baseplate, or at the whole interface between the ribbed surface and the coolant. Results, presented in the form of spatially resolved and spatially averaged Nusselt numbers, show that a ribbed section preceding the heated test section affects the heat transfer coefficient, relative to a smooth entrance section, for several repetitive modules. The influence of the thermal boundary condition was found to be mainly concentrated in the surface regions immediately upstream and downstream of each rib, with small differences, in terms of spatially averaged Nusselt numbers. The presented investigation is meant to point out that heat transfer experiments on ribbed channels, massively provided by the heat transfer community according to the current technical literature, should provide an exhaustive description of the entrance and thermal boundary conditions assumed in the experiments and eventually to discuss how they could potentially affect the results.