Thermohydraulic and irreversibility assessment of Power-law fluid flow within wedge shape channel

Abstract

Entropy production occurs in all thermohydraulic systems, which results in performance degradation. Entropy production promotes irreversibility in complicated systems, which are commonly found in industrial mechanisms. As a response, this technology is successfully applied in several technological applications involving porous media, propulsion ducts, electronic cooling, turbomachinery, and combustion. In the current computational study, energy transfer and entropy development resulting from pressure-driven flow of a non-Newtonian fluid inside a wedge-shaped expanding channel is evaluated. The direct characterization of the inefficiency mechanisms that cannot be accomplished by the conventional energy analysis. Entropy generation analysis, which precisely quantifies the irreversibility resulting from heat transfer, mass transfer, and viscous heat loss of the Jaffrey-Hamelflow of power-law fluid. The conservation equations are used to develop the governing flow equations for the non-Newtonian Carreau fluid model. For the sake of the current investigation, the equation for entropy generation is modelled using the second law of thermodynamics. The appropriate transformations are implemented in order to convert the governing PDEs into a collection of coupled ODEs. To solve the generated extremely non-linear ODEs, the shooting approach and the fourth, fifth order Runge-Kutta method have been used. The acquired numerical statistics indicate that, while the thermal radiation parameter tends to increase the rate of heat transfer, the Eckert number decreases as it rises. For higher estimation of Weissenberg numbers and power law, the entropy number drops in a divergent channel, but a contrary tendency is revealed for Bejan profile. A growth in the power-law index leads to a significant reduction in several irreversibility. Moreover, entropy generation is lower within divergent channel in comparison to the convergent section. Heat and mass transport are substantially reduced as the power-law index rises.