Forced convection heat transfer to a power-law fluid in arbitrary cross-section ducts

A numerical method is developed to predict the three-dimensional forced convection laminar incompressible flow of a power law fluid in arbitrary cross-section straight ducts. The continuity equation and boundary layer forms of the energy and momentum equations in rectangular coordinates are transformed into new orthogonal coordinates with boundaries coinciding with the coordinate surfaces. The resulting equations are solved using the finite difference technique. The numerical scheme is capable of handling different hydrodynamic and thermal entry boundary conditions but results are only presented for uniform inlet velocity and temperature profiles and isothermal wall. To demonstrate the wider applicability of the method local heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop in square, trapezoidal and regular pentagonal ducts are computed as functions of pertinent thermal and hydrodynamic parameters.