Natural convection of two staggered cylinders for various prandtl numbers and vertical and horizontal pitches

摘要

Natural convection heat transfer phenomena of two staggered cylinders were investigated for laminar flows. Numerical simulations were carried out to examine the effect of varying the Prandtl number and the vertical and horizontal pitch-to-diameter ratios for a Rayleigh number of 1.5 × 10~8 using FLUENT. This study focused on phenomena related to very small vertical pitch. The heat transfer rates of the upper cylinders were influenced by plumes from the lower cylinders, exhibiting preheating, velocity, sweep, and side flow effects. The heat transfer rates of the lower cylinders were not affected by the upper cylinders at moderate vertical pitches. However, when the vertical pitch was very small, they were affected by stagnant flow, sweep, and side flow effects.