SPH modeling of natural convection around a heated horizontal cylinder: A comparison with experiments

TL;DR

This study uses smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to model natural convection around a heated horizontal cylinder, comparing numerical results with experiments at low Rayleigh numbers, and finds good agreement in flow patterns and velocities.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of SPH in accurately simulating natural convection flow around a heated cylinder at low Rayleigh numbers, validated by experimental comparison.

Findings

SPH captures steady counter-rotating vortices and plume formations.

Flow velocities predicted by SPH match experimental data within 10^{-5} m/s.

Flow patterns are consistent for positive and negative temperature differences.

Abstract

An experimental and numerical smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) analysis was performed for the convective flow arising from a horizontal, thin cylindrical heat source enclosed in a glycerin-filled, slender enclosure at low Rayleigh numbers ($1.18\leq {\rm Ra}\leq 242$). Both the experiments and the SPH calculations were performed for positive ($0.1\leq\Delta T\leq 10$ K) and negative ($-10\leq\Delta T\leq -0.1$ K) temperature differences between the source and the surrounding fluid. In all cases a pair of steady, counter-rotating vortices is formed, accompanied by a plume of vertically ascending flow just above the source for $\Delta T>0$ and a vertically descending flow just below the source for $\Delta T<0$. The maximum flow velocities always occur within the ascending/descending plumes. The SPH predictions are found to match the experimental observations acceptably well with root-mean-square errors in the velocity profiles of the order of $\sim 10^{-5}$ m s$^{-1}$. The fact that the SPH method is able to reveal the detailed features of the flow phenomenon demonstrates the correctness of the approach.