Enhancing forced convection by inserting porous substrate in the core of a parallel‐plate channel

Abstract

Investigates numerically the mechanism of enhancing heat transfer by using porous substrate. The numerical investigation is carried out for transient forced convection in the developing region of a parallel‐plate channel partially filled with a porous medium. A porous substrate is inserted in the channel core in order to reduce the boundary layer thickness and hence, enhance heat transfer. Darcy‐Brinkman‐Forchheimer model is used to simulate the physical problem. Results of the current model show that the existence of the porous substrate may improve the Nusselt number at the fully developed region by a factor of four and even higher depending on the value of Darcy number. It is found that the maximum Nusselt number is achieved at an optimum thickness. Also, the study shows that partially filled channels have better thermal performance than the totally filled ones. However, there is an optimum thickness of porous substrate, beyond it the Nusselt number starts to decline.