Forced Convection Heat Transfer Simulation Using Dissipative Particle Dynamics

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) with energy conservation was applied to simulate forced convection in parallel-plate channels with boundary conditions of constant wall temperature (CWT) and constant wall heat flux (CHF). DPD is a coarse-grained version of molecular dynamics. An additional equation for energy conservation was solved along with conventional DPD equations, where inter-particle heat flux accounts for changes in mechanical and internal energies when particles interact with surrounding particles. The solution domain was considered to be two–dimensional with periodic boundary condition in the flow direction and additional layers of particles on the top and bottom of the channel to apply no-slip and wall temperature boundary conditions. The governing equation for energy conservation was modified based on periodic fully developed velocity and temperature conditions. The results were shown via velocity and temperature profiles across the channel cross-section. The Nusselt numbers for CWT and CHF were calculated from the temperature gradient at the wall using a second order accurate forward difference approximation. The results agreed well with the exact solutions to within 2.3%.