Numerical Optimization of Heat Transfer from Multiple Jets Impinging on a Moving Curved Surface for Industrial Drying Machines

Abstract

Jet impingements enhance the heat and mass transfer rate in industrial drying machines. The designer should optimize the design parameters of industrial drying equipment to achieve maximum heat transfer rate. The heat transfer between multiple jets and a moving curved surface is more difficult to study due to the changing boundaries and the effect of surface curvature but is also very relevant in industrial drying applications. SST k-ω turbulence model is used to simulate a real geometry for industrial drying applications. The SST k-ω turbulence model succeeded with reasonable accuracy in reproducing the experimental results. The jet to surface distance, jet to jet spacing, jet inlet velocity, jet angle, and surface velocity are chosen as the design parameters. For the optimization of the impinging round jet, the average Nu number on the moving curved surface is set as the objective functions to be maximized. The SHERPA search algorithm is used to search for the optimal point from the weighted sum of all objectives method. One correlation is developed and validated for the average Nu number. It is found that the maximum average Nu number correlates with high values of jet inlet velocity (Vj), jet angle (θ) and jet to jet spacing (S/d) and low values of the jet to surface distance (H/d) and relative surface velocity (VR). The agreement in the prediction of the average Nu number between the numerical simulation and correlation is found to be reasonable and all the data points deviate from the correlation by less than 4%.