The Effect of Geometrical Electrical Cable Configurations on Heat Transfer in Cable Ducts

In this paper a numerical study of two-dimensional conjugate natural convection in square cavity containing heated cylinders and outer isothermal boundaries is performed. The cavity is designed to simulate an unfilled trough containing electrical cables. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of geometrical arrangements of electrical cables in underground cable ducts on the heat transfer from the cables. The numerical investigation is performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics. Asymetric flow around the cables caused the temperature distributions around the cables for the different geometric arrangement to be dissimilar. The local Nusselt number around the cables was a function of the angle (θ), and the Nusselt number distributions vary for each cable and arrangement. The diagonal arrangement was found to be the least favourable, as this arrangement leads to higher temperatures in the cables compared to the vertical and horizontal arrangement.