CALCULATION OF FORCED FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER AROUND A CYLINDER IN CROSSFLOW

Abstract

A numerical model has been developed to study forced flaw and convection heat transfer over a circular cylinder in crossflow. Cases having either a constant heat flux or an isothermal wall are considered. It is assumed that the cylinder is placed in a fluid stream with uniform flow and without any free-stream disturbances. The formulation of the governing equations uses the stream function-vorticity approach along with a mapping transformation between the circular physical geometry and a rectangular computational regime. Solution techniques using the central difference and power law forms are compared. Results for air are obtained up to a Reynolds number of 3480, This is a significant improvement over previous work, which was successful only up to a Reynolds number of 200. In treating the wake region the line of symmetry is assumed, although this is somewhat relaxed by incorporating the radiant Sommerfeld condition for higher Reynolds number cases. The influence of an assumed steady-state behavior of the wake (which neglected transient shedding phenomena) is shown to be a good approximation to the long-term average of the measured heat transfer data.