Turbulent forced convection in a parallel plate channel with natural convection on the outside

An analysis of heat transfer from a parallel plate channel with turbulent flow inside and natural convection outside has been made in the present study. The efficacy of the numerical solution demonstrates a very peculiar behavior of the fluid flow. The salient feature of this study is the solution of Navier Stokes equation and the equation of energy both in the inside and outside of the channel showing congruence with the real situation. The numerical simulation is carried out using the commercially available package, FLUENT which works on the finite volume technique. Based on a parametric study, a correlation for the overall heat transfer rate as a function of the pertinent parameters influencing the heat transfer from the surface has been developed. A final attempt has been made to study the behavior of thermal entry length for the case where there exists forced convection on the outside with the flow inside under the aforementioned similar conditions. All of these considerations are expected to make the study of actual thermal hydraulics of channel flow more informative and helpful. © 2004 Elsevier Science Ltd.