Conjugate problem of combined radiation and laminar forced convection separated flow

This paper presents a numerical investigation for laminar forced convection flow of a radiating gas in a rectangular duct with a solid element that makes a backward facing step. The fluid is treated as a gray, absorbing, emitting and scattering medium. The governing differential equations consisting the continuity, momentum and energy are solved numerically by the computational fluid dynamics techniques. Since the present problem is a conjugate one and both gas and solid elements are considered in the computational domain, simultaneously, the numerical solution of Laplace equation is obtained in the solid element for temperature calculation in this area. Discretized forms of these equations are obtained using the finite volume method and solved by the SIMPLE algorithm. The radiative transfer equation (RTE) is also solved numerically by the discrete ordinate method (DOM) for computation of the radiative term in the gas energy equation.The streamline and isotherm plots in the gas flow and the distributions of convective, radiative and total Nusselt numbers along the solid-gas interface are presented. Besides, the effects of radiation conduction parameter and also solid to gas conduction ratio as two important parameters on thermo hydrodynamic characteristics of such thermal system are explored. It is revealed that the radiative Nusselt number on the interface surface is much affected by RC parameter but the radiation conduction parameter has not considerable effect on the convective Nusselt number. Comparison between the present numerical results with those obtained by other investigators for the case of non-conjugate problems shows good consistency.