Investigation of inertial force effects on the heat transfer of viscoelastic fluid flow inside expanded planar channel with the symmetric abrupt expansion

In this paper, the heat transfer of viscoelastic fluid flow have numerically simulated inside a symmetric planar channel with 1:3 abrupt expansion. For modeling the rheological and nonlinear behavior of inertial flow related to the viscoelastic fluid, exponential form of the Phan Thien-Tanner (EPTT) model has been used. The thermal boundary condition of constant temperature has been considered at the inlet and on the walls of channel. Also, velocity is uniform and constant at the inlet of channel and its value is determined by the Reynolds number of flow. Due to the significant effect of temperature on the viscoelastic fluid properties, viscosity, relaxation time, specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity have been taken as a function of temperature and dissipation term has been employed in the energy equation. For coupling the governing equations, the PISO algorithm is utilized and finite volume method (FVM) is employed for discretizing these equations. In this study, the effect of inertial force is investigated on the velocity distribution, temperature distribution and variation of local and average Nusselt numbers in the expanded part of channel. Despite the symmetry in the planar channel, increasing the Reynolds number forms the symmetric and asymmetric flows inside the expanded part of channel. For asymmetric flows, increase of Reynolds number from 40 to 100 (growth of 2.5 times the Reynolds number) resulted in a 1.7-fold increase for the maximum values of local Nusselt numbers in the vicinity of the upper and lower walls of the channel expanded part.