PETROV-GALERKIN FINITE-ELEMENT APPROACH TO COUPLED HEAT AND FLUID-FLOW

A Finite Element method for thermally coupled flow problems is presented. To this effect the penalty approach is applied to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation. The Finite Element equations are established using a weak formulation of the conservation equations in conjunction with a streamline-upwind/Petrov-Galerkin formulation for the convective terms appearing in the Navier-Stokes equation and in the energy equation. The applicability of the numerical algorithm is demonstrated on various examples which refer to typical heat convection problems. In addition to the treatment of thermally coupled flow problems, the concurrent computation of heat exchange processes in solid structures with adjacent flow fields and thermal radiation interchange is established.