Characterization of Fuego for laminar and turbulent natural convection heat transfer.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is conducted for internal natural convection heat transfer using the low Mach number code Fuego. The flow conditions under investigation are primarily laminar, transitional, or low-intensity level turbulent flows. In the case of turbulent boundary layers at low-level turbulence or transitional Reynolds numbers, the use of standard wall functions no longer applies, in general, for wall-bounded flows. One must integrate all the way to the wall in order to account for gradients in the dependent variables in the viscous sublayer. Fuego provides two turbulence models in which resolution of the near-wall region is appropriate. These models are the v2-f turbulence model and a Launder-Sharma, low-Reynolds number turbulence model. Two standard geometries are considered: the annulus formed between horizontal concentric cylinders and a square enclosure. Each geometry emphasizes wall shear flow and complexities associated with turbulent or near turbulent boundary layers in contact with a motionless core fluid. Overall, the Fuego simulations for both laminar and turbulent flows compared well to measured data, for both geometries under investigation, and to a widely accepted commercial CFD code (FLUENT)