Numerical study of forced convection heat transfer over three cylinders in staggered arrangement immersed in porous media

Staggered arrangement is one of the common configurations in heat exchangers that make better mixing of flow and heat transfer augmentation than other arrangements. In this paper forced convection heat transfer over three isothermal circular cylinders in staggered configuration in isotropic packed bed was investigated. In this work laminar two dimensional incompressible steady state equations of momentum and energy were solved numerically by finite volume method. Simulation was done in  three Reynolds numbers of 80, 120 and 200. The results indicate that, using porous medium the Nusselt number enhanced considerably for any of cylinders and it presents thin temperature contours for them. Also is shown that by increasing Reynolds number, the heat transfer increased in both channel but the growth rate of it in porous media is larger. In addition, results of simulation in porous channel show that with increasing Peclet number, heat transfer increased logarithmically.