ARTICLE:

• NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF FROST GROWTH FOR TURBULENT FLOW IN A 2-DIMENSIONAL DUCT  download article

Mehdi Salmanpour
Assistante Professor of Marvdasht Islamic Azad University

Mahmood Yaghoubi
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran; Academy of Science, I.R. Iran

ABSTRACT

Theoretical analysis of frost growth through a 2-D cold duct with fully turbulent forced convection is made numerically in the present article. Convection heat and mass transfer were simulated using a two-dimensional transient scheme and a low Reynolds number model (k−ε) for turbulent flow. The physical domain of interest was divided into two sub-domains, one for the humid air stream between the plates, and another one for the frost layer. The governing equations for both domains are parabolic with respect to time and fully elliptic with respect to space and they are coupled by boundary conditions at the moving interface that required an iterative solution strategy for convergence. The numerical scheme is validated with experimental measurements of frost growth in a cold duct and good agreement was observed. Variation of frost thickness with respect to time, temperature distribution of the frost surface, frost porosity, and temperature distribution in the frost layer is determined numerically with appropriate time step for various parameters. For practical applications of frost, formation in parallel plate fins attempt is made to develop a correlation for frost growth in terms of non-dimensional parameters for small period of cooling.

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