An Investigation on Forced Convection in Clearance of Corotating Disks With Diverging Laminar Flow

Abstract

In this work, forced convection in the laminar outflow between two disks is predicted. The disks can be corotating or contrarotating with equal or with different angular velocities. A published closed form solution is used to model the forced convection. The simplified energy equation is discretized using a finite difference method. The discretized equation is solved using the tridiagnal matrix algorithm (TDMA). Results are obtained for a heat flux as well as a specified temperature boundary condition and are presented for various flow parameters such as throughflow Reynolds number, rotational Reynolds number, gap ratio and speed ratio. The parameters except the speed ratio affect the temperature field strongly. The computed Nusselt number is in good agreement with the published experimental data. The coupling of closed form solution and energy equation predicts temperature field accurately. Additionally, the solution procedure is simplified considerably and the solution is obtained with lesser computational resources.