Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer Process of Viscoelastic Fluid Flow at High Weissenberg Number by Log-Conformation Reformulation

Abstract

Viscoelastic fluids are now becoming promising candidates of microheat exchangers’ working medium due to the occurrence of elastic instability and turbulence at microscale. This paper developed a sound solver for the heat transfer process of viscoelastic fluid flow at high Wi, and this solver can be used to design the multiple heat exchangers with viscoelastic fluids as working medium. The solver validation was conducted by simulating four fundamental benchmarks to assure the reliability of the established solver. After that, the solver was adopted to study the heat transfer process of viscoelastic fluid flow in a curvilinear channel, where apparent heat transfer enhancement (HTE) by viscoelastic fluid was achieved. The observed heat transfer enhancement was attributed to the occurrence of elastic turbulence which continuously mix the hot and cold fluids by the twisting and wiggling flow motions.