Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Channel Flow with Built-in Equilateral Triangular Prism in Zig-Zag Arrangement

In this research work, heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics in a channel in the presence of triangular prism have been numerically investigated in the laminar and turbulent flow regime. The computations are performed for Reynolds number varying from 50 to 500 for laminar, 5000 to 20000 for turbulent and blockage ratio (BR) of 0.25, where blockage ratio is the ratio of prism base to the channel height. The Navier Stokes equation and the energy equation are solved by using Fluent [14.0]. The unstructured triangular mesh is used for the computational domain. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the spacing between the channel wall and triangular prism on heat transfer and fluid characteristics. The results shows that in the presence of triangular prism in zig-zag arrangement, the average Nusselt number is 10.72 % more as compared to presence of a single triangular prism. It is further observed that the heat transfer increases with the increase in Reynolds number (Re).The enhancement is due to the formation of vortices which travels long way in the downstream direction. However the heat transfer enhancement is associated with greater pressure drop.