An immersed-boundary method for conjugate heat transfer analysis

An immersed-boundary method is proposed for the analysis of conjugate problems of convective heat transfer in conducting solids. Inside the solid body, momentum forcing is applied to set the velocity to zero. A thermal conductivity ratio and a heat capacity ratio, between the solid body and the fluid, are introduced so that the energy equation is reduced to the heat diffusion equation. At the solid fluid interface, an effective conductivity is introduced to satisfy the heat flux continuity. The effective thermal conductivity is obtained by considering the heat balance at the interface or by using a harmonic mean formulation. The method is first validated against the analytic solution to the heat transfer problem in a fully developed laminar channel flow with conducting solid walls. Then it is applied to a laminar channel flow with a heated, block-shaped obstacle to show its validity for geometry with sharp edges. Finally the validation for a curvilinear solid body is accomplished with a laminar flow through arrayed cylinders.