CFD analysis of heat transfer in simultaneously developing region of a square duct using OpenFOAM

Numerical analysis is performed to make a comparative study of laminar forced convective heat transfer in the simultaneously developing regions of heated square ducts. A non-conjugate case, a square duct with single-solid and a square duct with two-solids are selected for the present study. The square duct with two-solids is formed by cladding steel duct over the single-solid Aluminium square duct. The contact resistance between the two solids is neglected. A constant uniform temperature boundary condition is specified over the exterior wall for the ducts and the thermo physical properties of the fluid is assumed to be constant. The non-conjugate case is formed by applying a constant uniform temperature throughout the bulk of the single-solid duct wall. The chtMultiRegionFoam solver in OpenFOAM is used to solve the multiregional heat transfer problem using Finite Volume Method. The results are plotted for longitudinal and transverse distributions of average Nusselt number, local Nusselt number, friction factor and drag coefficient along various curves in the computational domain. The results shows that the average Nusselt number is generally higher for square duct with two solids when compared with single-solid square duct and non-conjugate case.