EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON FLOW THROUGH A CONFINED RECTANGULAR CHANNEL MOUNTED WITH SQUARE BLOCKS

Abstract

Study on separated flow and step flow is subject of interest for many years for its wide industrial applications like cooling of electronic devices, heat exchangers, gas turbine components and other thermal equipments. Present experimental investigation is to report the influence of the block over rectangular channel in confined environment. Size of recirculation vortex, center of recirculation vortex for various Reynolds number with center to center distance between the blocks in the stream wise direction of the flow (Lx/Ly ratio) equal to 2, are the parameters reported when water is used as the working fluid. Outcome of this experimental study shows that, the size of the vortex increases with the increase of Reynolds number and the center of the vortex shifts in the direction of flow downstream of the blocks. Reynolds number considered for this study ranges from 800 to 1500 with a step of 100. Flow visualisation for the range of Reynolds number is presented.

Keywords

• Channel flow
• Flow over blocks
• Flow visualisation
• Reynolds number
• Vortex center