Turbulent flow and heat transfer in a tube bank

1. Purpose
The Purpose of CFD Lab 3 is to simulate a steady turbulent flow and heat transfer in a tube bank. A
schematic of the problem is shown in Fig. 1. The bank consists of uniformly spaced tubes with a diam-
eter of 9.7 mm, which are staggered across the cross-fluid flow. Their centers are separated by a distance
S2 of 20.3 mm in the x direction, and S1 = 24.8 mm in the y direction. Because of the symmetry of the
tube bank geometry, only a portion of the domain needs to be modeled.
Students will validate Nusselt number and pressure loss coefficients obtained by simulation
using empirical data, analyze the differences between calculations and experimental results, and present
results in CFD Lab report.

2. Simulation Design

S1
Tinlet
d
Twall

S2

Fig. 1. 2D section of a tube bank

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The problem to be solved is that of turbulent flow and heat transfer in a tube bank.
The inlet air mass flow rate is in the range of 0.08 to 0.8 kg/s. Three cases corresponding to different
values of flow rate should be simulated. The values of mass flow rate are specified by teacher.
The temperature of the tube wall (Twall) is equal to 400 K and the bulk temperature of the cross flow
water (T1) is 300 K.

An unstructured mesh should be created.

The mesh should have concentrated quadrilateral cells near wall surfaces to provide better resolution of
the viscous gradients. After calculations the nondimensional distance to the wall should be controlled.
The mesh should be improved if necessary.

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3. Project Schematic in Ansys Workbench

3.1. Start ANSYS Workbench

3.2. Toolbox -> Component Systems. Create a scheme of your project in Workbench Project
Schematic Window.
Drag and drop Geometry, Mesh and Fluent components and create connections between
components as per below.

3.3. File > Save As. Save the workbench file.

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4. Geometry

4.1. Right click Geometry and select New DesignModelerGeometry…. Start Design Modeler to
create the computational area.

4.2. Create a rectangular area of given dimensions.

4.3. Add two circles of given radius.

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 4.4. Use Modify>Trim option to create a desired shape.

4.5. Concept> Surfaces from Sketches. Choose the sketch. Click Generate.

Comment
The Sketch of the area can be also in a different way. You can use arc and line tools. The third
way is to use circle and rectangular tools and Boolean>Subtract Option.

4.6. Close Design Modeler.

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5. Meshing
A nonuniform unstructured mesh using Meshing software should be created.
The grid nodes should be concentrated near the tube walls. A uniform distribution of grid nodes
around the cylinder is recommended. Quadrilateral cells can be used in the regions surrounding the
tube walls and triangular cells can be used for the rest of the domain, resulting in a hybrid mesh. The
quadrilateral cells provide better resolution of the viscous gradients near the tube walls. The remainder
of the computational domain can be filled with triangular cells for the sake of convenience.

5.1. Right click on Mesh and select Edit. Start Meshing.

5.2. Details of “Mesh”-> Physic Reference->CFD

5.3. Mesh > Insert > Inflation. Use Inflation Tool to create quadrilateral cells near the walls.

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5.4. Detail of Inflation>Geometry. Select the computational Domain as a Target Body:

5.5. Detail of Inflation>Boundary. Select boundaries (tube walls) to create quadrilateral cells
near them:

5.6. Set the Maximum Layers equal to 15 (you can try to set different values, but not less than
10) in Inflation. This will generate quadrilateral cells in the regions surrounding the tube
walls.

5.7. Insert the method of discretization for the rest of the domain. Mesh > Insert > Method> Tri-
angles

5.8. Click Generate

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 5.9. Improve the grid quality. It is possible to use the following options to improve the grid
(to decrease the cell sizes). Both are available in Details of “Mesh”.
 Decrease Element Size in Defaults. Try different values of Sizing. You can examine the number
of Nodes and Elements in Statistic.

5.10. Create the following Named Selections: “inlet”, “outlet”, “wall” and “symmetry”. The
inlet and outlet boundaries will be redefined as periodic using the text user interface later (in
Fluent).

5.11. Close Meshing.

5.12. File > Save Project. Save the project and close the window. Update Mesh on Work-
bench if necessary.

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6. Solving in Fluent
6.1. Run Fluent.

Be sure that the following options are chosen in Setup.

6.2. Energy > On

6.3. Models->Viscous Model->k-epsilon with Enhanced Wall Treatment

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 Boundary Conditions:
Create the periodic zone.
6.4. In Fluent Setup the inlet boundary will be redefined as a translationally periodic
zone and outlet as a periodic shadow of inlet.
 Press <Enter> in the console to get the command prompt (>).
 Enter the text command and input responses outlined in boxes as shown:

6.5. Boundary Conditions>Periodic Conditions. Define the mass flow rate for periodic
conditions

6.6. Boundary Conditions>wall. Set the wall temperature equal to 400 K.

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 6.7. Solution > Monitors > Residual. Decrease the Residuals Criteria to 1e-6 for all equa-
tions.

6.8. Solution > Initialization> Hybrid.

6.9. Solution > Initialization> Patch. Patch the fluid zone with the bulk upstream tempera-
ture value.
The Hybrid Initialization method computes the initial flow field based on inlet and outlet
boundary conditions. In this case we have periodic boundary conditions with a specified up-
stream bulk temperature. You will patch the initialized solution with this temperature value in
order to improve convergence.

6.10. Solution > Run calculation. Change number of iterations to 1000 and click Calculate.

Comment

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In case of bad convergence decrease the Under-Relaxation Factors.

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7. Results post-processing
! Before proceeding with Post-processing check the value of Y+. It should be less than 1. This
condition corresponds to Enhanced Wall Treatment Option.

To check the Y+ value do the following

7.1.1. Results> Plots > XY Plot. Choose the options as suggested below.

If the value of Y+ is much more than 1

 You can go back and improve the grid. You should create smaller cells near the walls. For ex-
ample, you can increase the number of layers in Inflation.
 You can also go to Mesh>Adapt>Refine/Coarsen>Cell Registers>New>Yplus/Ystar and
change the options as below.
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Pictures to be created
 Temperature fields
 Velocity vector fields
 Pressure fields
 Stream function fields
 Local heat transfer distribution
 Y+ distribution

Data to be calculated
 Average Nusselt number
 Average heat transfer coefficient

Plot a graph of local heat transfer coefficient

7.1.2. Results> Plots > XY Plot. Choose the options as suggested below.

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 Plot stream lines

7.1.3. Results> Graphics > Contours. Choose the options as suggested below.

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7.1.4. Display > Views>Symmetry>Apply. Change the view to mirror the display across the
symmetry planes and display velocity contours.

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 7.2. Equations

7.2.1. Reynolds number and Nusselt number are defined as following:

𝑢∙𝑑
𝑅𝑒 =
𝜈
𝛼𝑑
𝑁𝑢 =
𝜆
Here 𝛼 – averaged surface heat transfer coefficient.

7.2.2. Mean velocity corresponding to Fluent simulation can be calculated using a following
formula:

𝑚̇ = 𝑢 ∙ 𝜌 ∙ 0,5 ∙ 𝑆

7.2.3. Results>Reports>Surface Integrals>Wall Fluxes> Surface Nusselt number. Click

Compute. The Nusselt number calculated by Fluent will appear in Console.

Check that in Reference Values the following values are chosen:

Length = tube diameter
Temperature = 300 K
These will provide a correct Nusselt calculations.

7.2.4. Alternatively, the Nusselt number can be calculated by using the following empirical equa-
tions for heat exchangers:

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 . .
𝑁𝑢 = 0.41 ∙ 𝑅𝑒 ∙ 𝑃𝑟 ∙𝐶 ,
Where
/
𝐶 = , if <2

𝐶 = 1.12, if ≥2

𝐶 is used to take into account the influence of tube bank geometry.

𝑃𝑟 is a Prandtl number. It characterizes the fluid properties.

Fill the following tables after calculations

𝑚̇, kg/s U, m/s Re Pr 𝑁𝑢 𝑁𝑢 ΔNu, %

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