Unsteady Heat Transfer from an Equilateral Triangular Cylinder in the Unconfined Flow Regime

Effects of Reynolds number on the heat transfer characteristics of a long (heated) equilateral triangular cylinder are investigated for the range of conditions Re = 50–150 (in the steps of 10) and Prandtl number = 0.71 (air) in the unconfined unsteady cross-flow regime. In order to simulate the present situation, the computational grid is created by using commercial grid generator GAMBIT and the numerical computations are carried out by using FLUENT (6.3). The SIMPLE method is used to solve continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equations along with the appropriate boundary conditions. The second order upwind scheme is used to discretize the convective terms, while the central difference scheme is used to discretize the diffusive terms in the governing equations. The present results are in an excellent agreement with the literature values. The temperature isotherms and temporal history of Nusselt number are presented in detail. The local as well as time-averaged Nusselt numbers are calculated. The time-averaged Nusselt number increases with increasing Reynolds number for the fixed value of the Prandtl number. Finally, the present numerical results are used to develop the simple heat transfer correlation for the range of conditions covered here.