Numerical analysis of turbulent forced convection and fluid flow past a triangular cylinder with control plate using standard $\kappa$-$\epsilon$ model

TL;DR

This study numerically investigates turbulent flow and heat transfer past a triangular cylinder with a splitter plate, analyzing how gap ratio and plate length affect flow dynamics and thermal performance using a standard psilon model.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical analysis of flow control via splitter plates on a triangular cylinder, highlighting effects on vortex shedding and heat transfer.

Findings

Drag force decreases with increasing gap ratio.

Vortex shedding is suppressed at higher gap ratios.

Heat transfer improves with a finite gap but decreases with longer splitter plates.

Abstract

Turbulent flow past an equilateral triangular cylinder with splitter plate inserted downstream is numerically tested for different gap ratios (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2) and plate dimensions (0, 1, 1.5) on the flow field and heat transfer characteristics. Unsteady flow simulations are carried out at Re=22,000 in a finite volume based collocated framework, on a two-dimensional unstructured mesh. Reynolds averaged momentum and energy equations are solved in conjunction with the standard $\kappa$-$\epsilon$ model. In this study, cylinder and control plate are subjected to constant wall temperature. It is observed that the drag force on the triangular cylinder-splitter plate system reduced with an increase in gap ratio. Vortex shedding is suppressed as Strouhal number (St) reduced to its least value for the maximum gap-ratio configuration studied. Heat transfer performance is also significantly improved with the inclusion of a finite gap. In addition to that, the effect of variation in length of the splitter plate has also been studied on the force coefficients, Strouhal number, local and surface averaged Nusselt number. Results show that increasing the length of the splitter plate significantly suppressed the shedding with a minimum frequency obtained for the maximum plate length of Ls/h = 1.5. However, overall heat transfer reduced with the increase in plate length.