Numerical study on overall thermal performance in SAH duct with compound roughness of V-shaped ribs and dimples

This paper presents the thermal hydraulic performance of a three dimensional rib-roughened solar air heater (SAH) duct with the one principal wall subjected to uniform heat flux. The SAH duct has aspect ratio of 12.0 and the Reynolds number ranges from 2000 to 12000. The roughness has relative rib height of 0.045, ratio of dimple depth to print diameter of 0.5 and rib pitch ratio of 8.0. The flow attack angle is varied from 35° to 70°. Various turbulent flow models are used for the heat transfer and fluid flow analysis and their results are compared with the experimental results for smooth surfaces. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results based on the renormalization k-epsilon model are in better outcomes compared with the experimental data. This model is used to calculate heat transfer and fluid flow in SAH duct with the compound roughness of V-shaped ribs and dimples. The overall thermal performance based on equal pumping power is found to be the highest (2.18) for flow attack angle of 55°. The thermo-hydraulic performance for V-pattern shaped ribs combined with dimple ribs is higher than that for dimple rib shape and V-pattern rib shape air duct.