PERFORMANCE OF A THREE-DIMENSIONAL, PRESSURE-BASED, UNSTRUCTURED FINITE-VOLUME METHOD FOR LOW-REYNOLDS-NUMBER INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW AND WALL HEAT TRANSFER RATE PREDICTION

• Published in: Numerical heat transfer. Part B, Fundamentals Vol. 43; no. 5; pp. 403 - 423
• Main Authors: Woodfield, Peter L., Suzuki, Kenjiro, Nakabe, Kazuyoshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia, PA Informa UK Ltd 01.05.2003; Taylor & Francis
• Subjects: Analytical and numerical techniques; Computational methods in fluid dynamics; Exact sciences and technology; Fluid dynamics; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Heat transfer; Laminar flows; Low-reynolds-number (creeping) flows; Physics; Low Reynolds number; Nusselt number; Three dimensional flow; Computational fluid dynamics; Digital simulation; Velocity distribution; Incompressible fluid; Mesh generation; Finite volume methods; Heat transfer
• ISSN: 1040-7790; 1521-0626
• DOI: 10.1080/713836243

Unstructured finite-volume methods, which are rapidly increasing in popularity, provide a powerful alternative for the seamless handling of fluid dynamics in complex geometry. A vertex-centered, three-dimensional, unstructured finite-volume formulation is presented and applied to a number of standard and nonstandard test cases involving incompressible flow and heat transfer at low Reynolds number. The entire numerical formulation, including the diffusion terms, is derived using a fixed, Cartesian coordinate frame of reference and an edge-based data structure, making the present approach straightforward to follow and implement. The method is found to perform very well for all cases considered.