2D Water Flow Over a Heated Cylinder

Analysis Characteristics

• Steady-state
• 2D internal flow
• Turbulent
• Incompressible
• Forced convection
• Water

Reference

Kreith, F., Principles of Heat Transfer, 3rd Edition, Intext Educational Publishers, 1973, p. 468.

Problem Description

A circular cylinder with an infinitely long (thus approximated as 2D) is immersed in a turbulent water flow having a Reynolds number based on the diameter of the cylinder of 1.0e5. The cylinder wall has a fixed temperature. This case is analyzed to verify the water flow and heat transfer modeling capabilities of Autodesk® CFD.

Accuracy of the Autodesk® CFD simulation is assessed by comparing two expressions for Nusselt number: one an experimental correlation and the other an analytical derivation. The experimental correlation is extracted from Kreith (1973):

The subscript “e” indicates experimental. The properties for this expression are determined at the film temperature.

For the Autodesk® CFD calculations, we use:

where subscript “c” indicates calculated.

• Q is the heat transfer into the fluid (in watts)
• L and D are the length (unit length into the page) and diameter of the cylinder
• k is the conductivity of the fluid
• h is the film coefficient
• Tcyl is the fixed temperature of the cylinder

Geometry and Boundary Conditions

All dimensions are in inches:

Results