PREDICTION OF TURBULENT 3-DIMENSIONAL HEAT-TRANSFER OF HEATED BLOCKS USING LOW-REYNOLDS-NUMBER 2-EQUATION MODEL

Periodic fully developed fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are obtained numerically for turbulent flow over a three-dimensional array of heated square blocks deployed along one wall of a parallel-plate duct. This configuration simulates forced convection cooling of electronic equipment. The Lam-Bremhorst low-Reynolds-number form of the k - epsilon model is used for the computations. The computations are performed for a set of geometric parameters characterizing the array, for a range of Reynolds numbers from 10(3) to 10(4), for a Prandtl number of 0.7, and for a condition of uniform wall temperature. The results are compared with relevant experimental data from the literature and also with the numerical values obtained by using the high-Reynolds-number form of the k - epsilon turbulence model.