N-Side Cell-Based Smoothed Finite Element Method for Incompressible Flow with Heat Transfer Problems

Abstract

In this paper, an n-sided cell-based smoothed finite element method (nCS-FEM) is presented to solve the convective heat transfer in incompressible viscous fluid flow. The Characteristic-based-split (CBS) scheme is used to stabilize the spatial and pressure oscillations of CS-FEM that occur during the process of solving incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Meanwhile, the characteristic-Galerkin method in CBS is adopted as the convective stabilization in the heat transfer equation. In order to verify the proposed method, typical numerical examples are used to test the computational accuracy of CS-FEM. Meanwhile, the investigation of the robustness of highly distorted element is conducted in a natural convection test case. The calculation results of numerical examples show that CS-FEM is qualified to solve the steady and unsteady convective heat transfer problems for incompressible laminar flow with high reliability. The flow across tube banks with complex geometry in the heat sinks is also simulated to prove the capabilities of the proposed method. Well agreed comparison with the results of CFD software, Fluent, proves that the present method can effectively simulate realistic and complex flow with heat transfer problems.