Numerical investigation of forced convection heat transfer in unsteady flow past a row of square cylinders

This paper presents the unsteady laminar forced convection heat transfer from a row of five isothermal square cylinders placed in a side-by-side arrangement at a Reynolds number of 150. The numerical simulations are performed using a finite volume code based on the PISO algorithm in a collocated grid system. Special attention is paid to investigate the effect of the spacing between the cylinders on the overall transport processes for the separation ratios (spacing to size ratio) between 0.2 and 10. No significant interaction between the wakes is observed for spacing greater than four times the diameter at this Reynolds number. However, at smaller spacing, the wakes interact in a complicated manner resulting different thermo-hydrodynamic regimes. The vortex structures and isotherm patterns obtained are systematically presented and discussed for different separation ratios. In addition, the mean and instantaneous drag and lift coefficients, mean and local Nusselt number and Strouhal number are determined and discussed for various separation ratios. A new correlation is derived for mean Nusselt number as a function of separation ratio for such flows.