Study and application of computational simulation in simple problems of fluid mechanics and heat transfer - Part II: Heat transfer classic problems

Continuing the study on the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in physics and engineering teaching, the present work aims to analyze and compare, for didactic purposes, solutions numerically obtained against known analytical and empirical solutions, commonly presented in the classroom and in undergraduate labs, of classical problems involving fluid dynamics and heat transfer. In this study the main focus was pointed to heat transfer problems.

For the numerical solutions computation, one of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) softwares that represent its state-of-the-art, ANSYS CFX 12.1 was employed. The chosen problems were: laminar heated plate convection, laminar flow around a heated cylinder, turbulent internal flow in heated circular ducts and concentric tubes heat exchanger. These problems were chosen and solved by undergraduate students, demonstrating the usefulness of CFD as a tool for learning physical phenomena.