Faculty Publications
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Item A synergistic combination of Asymptotic Computational Fluid Dynamics and ANN for the estimation of unknown heat flux from fin heat transfer(Elsevier B.V., 2018) Kumar, H.; Gnanasekaran, N.This paper deals with conjugate heat transfer from a rectangular fin. The problem consists of mild steel (250 × 150 × 6 mm) fin placed vertically on aluminium base (250 × 150 × 4 mm). The aluminium plate is subjected to an unknown heat flux at the base. The fin set-up is modelled using ANSYS fluent 14.5. The fin geometry is surrounded by extended domain filled with air so as to account for natural convection conjugate heat transfer. Grid independence study is carried out to fix the number of grids. A simple correlation using Asymptotic Computational Fluid Dynamics (ACFD) is developed and the same is used as a forward model to obtain the temperature distribution considering heat flux as the input. The problem is treated as an inverse problem in which a non-iterative method, ANN is used as the inverse model to estimate the unknown heat flux from the information of temperature. The results of the forward model and the ANN predicted values are in close agreement with error less than 1%. Effect of noise on the unknown parameter is also studied extensively. © 2017 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria UniversityItem A Synergistic Combination of Thermal Models for Optimal Temperature Distribution of Discrete Sources Through Metal Foams in a Vertical Channel(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) infocentral@asme.org, 2019) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.This paper discusses about the numerical prediction of forced convection heat transfer through high-porosity metal foams with discrete heat sources in a vertical channel. The physical geometry consists of a discrete heat source assembly placed at the center of the channel along with high thermal conductivity porous metal foams in order to enhance the heat transfer. The novelty of the present work is the use of combination of local thermal equilibrium (LTE) model and local thermal nonequilibrium (LTNE) model for the metal foam region to investigate the temperature distribution of the heat sources and to obtain an optimal heat distribution so as to achieve isothermal condition. Aluminum and copper metal foams of 10 PPI having a thickness of 20 mm are considered for the numerical simulations. The metal foam region is considered as homogeneous porous media and numerically modeled using Darcy Extended Forchheimer model. The proposed methodology is validated using the experimental results available in literature. The results of the present numerical solution indicate that the excess temperature of the bottom heat source reduces by 100 °C with the use of aluminum metal foam. The overall temperature of the vertical channel reduces based on the combination of LTE and LTNE models compared to only LTNE model. The results of excess temperature for both the empty and the metal foam filled vertical channels are presented in this work. © 2019 by ASME.Item Numerical Simulations of Flow-Assisted Mixed Convection in a Vertical Channel Filled with High Porosity Metal Foams(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2020) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.; Balaji, C.In this work, two-dimensional numerical simulations of flow-assisted mixed convection in a vertical channel filled with high porosity metal foams have been carried out by using the commercial ANSYS FLUENT. In order to enhance heat transfer, the vertical channel is filled with aluminum metal foams of different pores per inch (PPI). Four different metal foams PPI 10, 20, 30, and 45, with porosity values varying from 0.90 to 0.95 are considered in this study. The geometry under consideration consists of metal foam attached to the aluminum plate in the vertical channel and the resulting problem becomes conjugate heat transfer. The metal foam region is considered as a homogeneous porous medium with the Darcy Extended Forchheirmer model to evaluate the flow characteristics while the local thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer model is considered for the heat transfer analysis. Initially, numerical results are compared with the experimental results available in literature and the agreement was found to be good. Parametric studies show that as the metal foam PPI increases, the pressure drop increases, while the heat transfer is seen to increase with an increase in the pore density of the metal foam. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Numerical Simulations of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer through Aluminum and Copper Metal Foam Heat Exchanger–A Comparative Study(Taylor and Francis Ltd. michael.wagreich@univie.ac.at, 2020) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.This article discusses about a numerical simulation of a metal foam heat exchanger system carried out by a commercial software. A metal foam layer is attached to the bottom of the heat exchanger to absorb heat from the exhaust hot gas leaving the system. Two types of metal foams with two different pores per inch (PPI) values are considered for heat transfer enhancement. Similarly, two different materials Aluminum and copper, that poses high thermal conductivity, metal foams are considered for the present numerical simulations. The heat exchanger system is simulated over a range of 6–30 m/s fluid velocity. The proposed simulations are compared with theoretical and experimental data available in the literature. The goal is to improve the thermal performance of the heat exchanger by decreasing the pressure drop and maximizing the heat transfer rate. Finally, it has been noticed that the velocity of the fluid decreases as PPI increases at the expense of its pressure drop. The copper metal foam gives a maximum increase of 4–10% heat transfer rate compared to aluminum metal foams for a fluid velocity of 30 m/s. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Evaluation of artificial neural network in data reduction for a natural convection conjugate heat transfer problem in an inverse approach: experiments combined with CFD solutions(Springer, 2020) Kumar, M.K.H.; Vishweshwara, P.S.; Gnanasekaran, N.In this work, natural convection fin experiments are performed with mild steel as the fin and an aluminium plate as base. The dimension of the mild steel fin is 250 mm × 150 mm × 6 mm and the aluminium base plate is 250 mm × 150 mm × 8 mm. A heater is provided on one side of the aluminium base plate and the mild steel fin emerges on the other side of the plate. The heater provides required heat flux to the fin base; several steady-state natural convection experiments are performed for different heat fluxes and corresponding temperature distributions are recorded using thermocouples at different locations of the fin. In addition, a numerical model is developed that contains the dimensions of the fin set-up along with extended domain to capture the information of the fluid. Air is treated as a working fluid that enters the extended domain and absorbs heat from the heated fin. The temperature and the velocity of the fluid in the extended domain are obtained by solving the Navier–Stokes equation. The numerical model is now treated as a forward model that provides the temperature distribution of the fin for a given heat flux. An inverse problem is proposed to determine the heat flux that leads to the temperature distributions during experiments. The temperature distributions of the experiments and forward model are compared to identify the unknown heat flux. In order to reduce computational cost of the inverse problem the forward model is then replaced with artificial neural network (ANN) as data reduction, which is developed using several computational fluid dynamics solutions, and the inverse estimation is accomplished. The results indicate that a quick solution can be obtained using ANN with a limited number of experiments. © 2020, Indian Academy of Sciences.Item Nuances of fluid flow through a vertical channel in the presence of metal foam/solid block – A hydrodynamic analysis using CFD(Elsevier Ltd, 2020) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.A numerical study is presented in this paper to examine the fluid flow in a vertical channel partly filled with porous metallic foams. The physical model comprises of aluminum plate-heater assembly placed in the vertical channel. Heat is carried away by the working fluid air from the plates inside the vertical channel through forced convection. High thermal conductivity metal foams are attached to the heater-plate assembly in order to reduce the temperature of the aluminum plates. Thus, the study pays attention only to the characteristics of fluid flow at different positions of the vertical channel in the presence of metal foams. The present analysis considers the Forchheimer – Extended Darcy equation for the metal foam to predict the fluid flow in conjunction with the local non-thermal equilibrium model for the analysis of heat transfer through the porous metal foams. At first, the methodology applied to the present numerical analysis is validated with the existing results. Upon reaffirming the solution methodology, the results of the metal foam study are then compared with a solid block that replaces the metal foam structure inside the vertical channel. Consequently, as a novel approach, the analysis enables one to arbitrate the tradeoff between the porous metal foam and the solid block for heat transfer augmentation from the plate assembly to the air. © 2020 Elsevier LtdItem A Parametric Study on Mixed Convection in a Vertical Channel in the Presence of Wire Mesh(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2021) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.A numerical study on mixed convection is carried out through a partially filled brass wire mesh in a vertical channel. A heater embedded with aluminum plates is placed at the center of the vertical channel. The aluminum heater assembly is wrapped with brass wire mesh to facilitate more heat transfer. The vertical channel that consists of aluminum heater assembly with the brass wire mesh is considered as the numerical model. Local thermal non-equilibrium and Darcy extended Forchheimer models are used to accomplish the numerical simulations for thermal and flow characteristics of the considered domain. The aim of the study is to find out the optimum filling of the brass wire mesh in the channel which gives a higher heat transfer rate with low pumping power of the fluid. In the present analysis, three different filling conditions of wire mesh are considered: (i) fully filled channel, (ii) 70% filled channel, and (iii) 40% filled channel. From the results, it is inferred that the vertical channel partially filled with 70% of wire mesh porous medium predicts 89% of heat transfer of the completely filled channel with 41% reduced pressure loss. As a result, the proposed parametric study is good enough to prove that the partly filled wire mesh can be used in the thermal applications where augmentation of heat transfer is required with less pressure drop. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Performance evaluation of partially filled high porosity metal foam configurations in a pipe(Elsevier Ltd, 2021) Jadhav, P.H.; Gnanasekaran, N.; Arumuga Perumal, D.A.; Mobedi, M.In this contemporary research, a parametric analysis of partially filled high porosity metallic foams in a horizontal conduit is performed to augment heat transfer with reasonable pressure drop. The investigation includes six different models filled partly with aluminium foam by varying internal diameter of foams from the wall side and external diameter of foam from the core of the tube. The pore density of the foam ranges from 10 to 45 PPI and their porosity varies from 0.90 to 0.95. Flow dynamics are captured using Darcy Extended Forchheimer model for the porous filled region and two-equation turbulence k-? model employed in clear region of the fluid. The local thermal non-equilibrium assumption is incorporated in porous filled region of the conduit to compute the heat transport characteristics. The results showed that the thermal performance factor of 10 PPI aluminium foam performs close to the 10 PPI expensive copper foam. The performance factor is found to be higher for 30 PPI aluminium foam amongst the PPI's of the foam considered. However, the performance factor is found to be 2.93, 2.22 and 1.73 for 30PPI, 45 PPI and 20PPI with their porosities of 0.92, 0.90 and 0.90, respectively for the model 1, model 2 and model 3 at lower Reynolds number of 4500 and then it decreases progressively with increasing flow rates of the fluid. The results of average wall temperature, average Nusselt number and Colburn j factor are also evaluated to obtain best possible performance. © 2021Item Performance score based multi-objective optimization for thermal design of partially filled high porosity metal foam pipes under forced convection(Elsevier Ltd, 2022) Jadhav, P.H.; Trilok, G.; Gnanasekaran, N.; Mobedi, M.Optimization study in flow through metal foams for heat exchanging applications is very much essential as it involves variety of fluid flow and structural properties. Moreover, the identification of best combinations of structural parameters of metal foams for simultaneous improvement of heat transfer and pressure drop is a pressing situation. In this work, six different metal foam configurations are considered for the enhancement of heat transfer in a circular conduit. The foam is aluminum with PPI varying from 10 to 45 and almost the same porosity (0.90-0.95). The aluminum foams are chosen from the available literature and they are partially filled in the conduit to reduce the pressure drop. For a constant heat flux condition, the goal is to find out the efficient metal foam and configurations when air is considered as a working fluid. A special attention is paid to the preference between pressure drop and heat transfer enhancements. That is why TOPSIS optimization techniques with five different criteria (contains the combination of the weightage/priority of heat transfer and pressure drop) is used. Based on the numerical results of heat and fluid flow in conduit, it is found that when an equal importance is given to both heat transfer and friction effect, 30 PPI aluminum foam with 80% filling on the inner lateral of the pipe provides the best score as 0.8197. The best configuration and PPI for different preferences between friction and heat transfer enhancements is discussed in details. The Reynolds number varies from 4500 to 16500. © 2021 Elsevier LtdItem Thermohydraulic Efficiency of a Solar Air Heater in the Presence of Graded Aluminium Wire Mesh—A Combined Experimental–Numerical Study(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), 2023) Diganjit, R.; Gnanasekaran, N.; Mobedi, M.In this work, aluminium wire mesh (WM) samples with 3, 9, and 18 pores per inch (PPI) and porosities of 0.894, 0.812, and 0.917, respectively, were combined together to form graded structures including 3-9-18, 9-18-3, and 18-3-9 PPIs. A 5 mm thickness for each WM was considered for a length of 2 m and inserted into a single-pass solar air heater (SAH) in which the height of the SAH was 120 mm. For the numerical analysis, a 3D numerical model was considered in ANSYS fluent software, and the Rosseland radiation model renormalization group (RNG) k-ε enhanced wall function was incorporated to account for solar radiation. The local thermal equilibrium (LTE) model was considered to obtain the heat-transfer characteristics of the WM. The numerical results of the thermohydraulic performance parameter (THPP) of the 9-18-3 PPI WM were 13.04% and 11.92% higher than the 3-9-18 and 18-3-9 PPI samples, respectively. Later, 25% of the 9-18-3 graded wire mesh (GWM) was considered at four different locations, i.e., 0, 0.5, 1, and 1.5 m away from the inlet, and analysed to obtain the best location for efficient heat transfer. The computational results show that 1.5 m away from the inlet is the best location among the different locations considered. The experimental results of the GWM at 1.5 m away from the inlet demonstrated a 20.91% and 23.32% increase in thermal efficiency compared to the empty channel for the 0.027 kg/s and 0.058 kg/s mass flow rates, respectively. From numerical-cum-experimental analysis, it was found that inserting 25% length of GWM of the entire length of the test section at a distance of 1.5 m from the inlet in single pass SAH improves the overall performance of the empty channel of single-pass SAH. © 2023 by the authors.