Introduction

Many industrial applications, such as steam generation in a boiler or air cooling in the coil of an air conditioner, can be modeled as two-dimensional periodic heat flow. This tutorial illustrates how to set up and solve a periodic heat transfer problem, given a pregenerated mesh.

The system that is modeled is a bank of tubes containing a flowing fluid at one temperature that is immersed in a second fluid in cross flow at a different temperature. Both fluids are water, and the flow is classified as laminar and steady, with a Reynolds number of approximately 100. The mass flow rate of the cross flow is known and the model is used to predict the flow and temperature fields that result from convective heat transfer.

Due to symmetry of the tube bank and the periodicity of the flow inherent in the tube bank geometry, only a portion of the geometry will be modeled in ANSYS FLUENT, with symmetry applied to the outer boundaries. The resulting mesh consists of a periodic module with symmetry. In the tutorial, the inlet boundary will be redefined as a periodic zone, and the outflow boundary defined as its shadow.

This tutorial demonstrates how to do the following:

• Create periodic zones.

• Define a specified periodic mass flow rate.

• Model periodic heat transfer with specified temperature boundary conditions.

• Calculate a solution using the pressure-based solver.

• Plot temperature profiles on specified isosurfaces.