A NUMERICAL STUDY OF FLUID FLOW AND HEAT/MASS TRANSFER OVER A STACK OF PLANKS

Heat/mass transfer by air flow over a sample stack of planks is studied numerically. For the simulations, the low Re k-epsilon turbulence model and bounded QUICK scheme are used. The calculated Nusselt numbers are in good agreement with the experimental data

The results of our study show that the low Re turbulence models have advantages over the conventional high Re models for this type of industrial application. This is mainly due to the small height of separation bubbles resulting from the selected large blockage ratios (more than 50 percent) occurring in such flows

Numerical simulations were carried out to study the effect of the vertical air gap due to shrinkage and non uniform sawing as well as the non uniformity in the height of boards on the flow field and heat/mass transfer characteristics. The results show that the selected gap size significantly affects the local and average Nu numbers across the stack. We have suggested optimum gap sizes for maximum heat/mass for different flow velocities (Re numbers).