Study of Conjugate Convective Flow and entropy generation in a Channel Containing a Heated Obstacle

This theoretical work studied the heat transfer behaviour of laminar convection flow in a duct with a heated obstacle. The second law analysis is used to investigate the distribution of entropy generation in the flow domain to demonstrate the rate of irreversibilities in thermal system. The conjugate problem is solved numerically to obtain the velocity and temperature fields in both gas flow and solid element. For this purpose, the set of governing equations including conservations of momentum and energy for the gas phase and conduction equation for the obstacle are solved by the CFD technique. By this method, the hydrodynamic and thermal behaviors of the fluid flow around the obstacle and the temperature distribution in the solid element are obtained. An attempt is made to find the effects of many important parameters including the Reynolds number, fin geometry and solid to liquid thermal conductivity ratio on the performance of convective cooling. Finally good agreements are found between the present numerical predictions with experiment.