Forced Convection Heat Transfer in U-Bend, CFD Simulation by ANSYS Fluent

Project Description

In this project, forced convection heat transfer in a U-Bend with a heat flux on its outer walls has been simulated using ANSYS Fluent software. This project aims to consider forced convection. The water flow is considered in this u bend as flow in this simulation.

The 3D model of this project has been created by ANSYS Design Modeler software. The diameter of the pipe is equal to 13 mm. There are some holes in the plates in the bend and their diameter is equal to 70 mm. Their axial distance is equal to 20 mm and their transverse distance is equal to 16 mm.

We have meshed this geometry, using ANSYS Meshing software. The mesh type is unstructured and its cell number is equal to 2595714. Then we transferred it to the ANSYS Fluent software and change its type to polyhedral mesh.

This CFD project is the 3rd episode of the Heat Transfer Training Course.

Methodology of

Water flow is entered into the domain with a velocity equal to 0.0158 m/s. So the flow regime in this simulation is laminar flow and we have enabled the laminar flow as the viscous model. Also, a heat flux equal to 32087 W/m^2 is performed on the outer wall to consider the forced convection. We have enabled the energy equation to compute the temperature changes.

Forced Convection Heat Transfer in U-Bend Results

When the solution is complete, temperature, velocity, and pressure contours are obtained. As it is clear from the contours, heat transfer has happened well.We also obtained heat transfer coefficient(=220.9961) local and average (=25.78288 Nusselt number, pressure drop(=2.15) and friction factor (=0.35)