Faculty Publications
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Item Investigation of Mixed Convection Heat Transfer Through Metal Foams Partially Filled in a Vertical Channel by Using Computational Fluid Dynamics(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) infocentral@asme.org, 2018) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.Two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations of mixed convection heat transfer through aluminum metal foams partially filled in a vertical channel are carried out numerically. The objective of the present study is to quantify the effect of metal foam thickness on the fluid flow characteristics and the thermal performance in a partially filled vertical channel with metal foams for a fluid velocity range of 0.05-3 m/s. The numerical computations are performed for metal foam filled with 40%, 70%, and 100% by volume in the vertical channel for four different pores per inch (PPIs) of 10, 20, 30, and 45 with porosity values varying from 0.90 to 0.95. To envisage the characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer, two different models, namely, Darcy Extended Forchheirmer (DEF) and Local thermal non-equilibrium, have been incorporated for the metal foam region. The numerical results are compared with experimental and analytical results available in the literature for the purpose of validation. The results of the parametric studies on vertical channel show that the Nusselt number increases with the increase of partial filling of metal foams. The thermal performance of the metal foams is reported in terms of Colburn j and performance factors. © Copyright 2018 by ASME.Item Comparison of fluid flow and heat transfer through metal foams and wire mesh by using CFD(Bentham Science Publishers, 2019) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.Background: The unique structural characteristics of the metal foams, such as low density, large surface area, ability to increase turbulence, and increased heat transfer efficiency, are the advantages associated with thermal applications such as electronics cooling, refrigeration air conditioning, etc. The porous metal foam structures are extensively used to enhance heat transfer. Objective: This paper discusses the numerical simulations of a vertical channel filled with metal foam and wire mesh. The fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena of a wire mesh are compared with two different types of metal foams. Metal foams are made of aluminium and copper while the wire mesh is made of brass. The porosity of the metallic porous structures varies from 0.85 to 0.95. Methods: A Darcy extended Forchheirmer model is considered for solving fluid flow through the porous media while the heat transfer through the porous media is predicted using local thermal non-equilibrium model. Results: Initially, the results obtained using the proposed numerical procedures are compared with experimental results available in the literature. The numerical simulations suggest that the pressure drop increases as the velocity of the fluid increases and decreases as the porosity increases. The heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number are determined for both the metal foams and the wire mesh. Conclusion: The Nusselt number obtained for wire mesh shows almost 90% of the copper metal foam in the same porosity range. The numerical results suggest that the brass wire mesh porous medium can also be used for enhancement of heat transfer. In this article, patents have been discussed. © 2019 Bentham Science Publishers.Item Effect of thickness and thermal conductivity of metal foams filled in a vertical channel – a numerical study(Emerald Publishing, 2019) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.Purpose: This paper aims to discuss about the two-dimensional numerical simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer through high thermal conductivity metal foams filled in a vertical channel using the commercial software ANSYS FLUENT. Design/methodology/approach: The Darcy Extended Forchheirmer model is considered for the metal foam region to evaluate the flow characteristics and the local thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer model is considered for the heat transfer analysis; thus the resulting problem becomes conjugate heat transfer. Findings: Results obtained based on the present simulations are validated with the experimental results available in literature and the agreement was found to be good. Parametric studies reveal that the Nusselt number increases in the presence of porous medium with increasing thickness but the effect because of the change in thermal conductivity was found to be insignificant. The results of heat transfer for the metal foams filled in the vertical channel are compared with the clear channel in terms of Colburn j factor and performance factor. Practical implications: This paper serves as the current relevance in electronic cooling so as to open up more parametric and optimization studies to develop new class of materials for the enhancement of heat transfer. Originality/value: The novelty of the present study is to quantify the effect of metal foam thermal conductivity and thickness on the performance of heat transfer and hydrodynamics of the vertical channel for an inlet velocity range of 0.03-3 m/s. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.Item 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 Determination of interfacial heat transfer coefficient for the flow assisted mixed convection through brass wire mesh(Elsevier Masson SAS 62 rue Camille Desmoulins Issy les Moulineaux Cedex 92442, 2019) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.In this work, a numerical investigation of Darcy?Forchheimer mixed convection from a heated vertical flat plate embedded in a brass wire mesh porous medium is carried out to determine the coupled effects of flow and thermal diffusion. The numerical model consists of a two dimensional computational domain in which conjugate heat transfer analysis is performed to predict the hydrodynamic and thermal performance of the brass wire mesh in a vertical channel using Local Thermal Non-Equillibrium (LTNE) model. The novelty of the present study is to acquire the interfacial heat transfer coefficient, an as yet another challenging task, of the wire mesh porous medium so as to provide a quick and feasible solution to modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer through brass wire mesh porous media. The results of heat transfer through brass wire mesh are reported in terms of Colburn j factor, performance factor and are compared with other porous mediums available in literature. The present study not only opens up new vistas for more parametric studies but also provides practical and cost effective assessment to design new porous materials. © 2018 Elsevier Masson SASItem Inexpensive computations using computational fluid dynamics combined with asymptotics applied to laminar mixed convection in a vertical channel(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019) Nakate, P.; Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.In this work, a solution technique is proposed by synergistically combining asymptotics and computational fluid dynamics to ascertain a problem of laminar mixed convection heat transfer in a vertical channel. First, numerical simulation is carried out on a vertical channel that consists of an aluminum heater plate assembly at the center of the channel. The numerical model is treated as a conjugate heat transfer problem, and the concept of perturbation and blending is incorporated wherein the limiting solution of natural and forced convection is obtained in terms of average Nusselt number. These correlations are then blended to find a unified composite correlation that work very well for extreme limits of mixed convection. The Richardson number is chosen as an independent variable in the present analysis; as a result, the Nusselt number correlation is cogent for the mixed convection region. Upon performing the numerical simulations, the results of the mixed convection are then compared with experimental results available in the literature for the purpose of validation of the numerical solution. The results of the present work emphasize that, with minimum computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions, one can obtain a reasonably good composite correlation for the Nusselt number for mixed convection and also a substantial reduction of computations is possible ensuing an asymptotically flawless solution. © © 2019 by ASME.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 Ltd