ANALYSIS OF FORCED-CONVECTION ENHANCEMENT IN A CHANNEL USING POROUS BLOCKS

This work presents a detailed investigation of forced convection enhancement in a channel using multiple emplaced porous blocks. The Brinkman-Forchheimer-extended Darcy model is used to characterize the flowfield inside the porous regions in order to account for the inertia effects as well as the viscous effects. Solution of the coupled governing equations for the porous/fluid composite system is obtained using a stream function-vorticity approach. Important fundamental and practical results have been presented and discussed. These results thoroughly document the dependence of the streamline, isotherm, and local Nusselt number distributions on the governing parameters defining the problem, such as the Reynolds number, Darcy number, Prandtl number, inertial parameter, and two pertinent geometric parameters. An in-depth discussion of the formation and variation of the recirculation caused by the porous medium is presented, and the existence of an optimum porous matrix is demonstrated. It is shown that altering some parametric values can have significant and interesting effects on both the flow pattern as well as heat transfer characteristics.