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A strongly coupled block-implicit method for non-Newtonian convective heat transfer problems

Conference ·
OSTI ID:485088
;  [1]
  1. Polytechnic Univ., Brooklyn, NY (United States). Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering Dept.

The Bingham, Herschel-Bulkley, and Casson models are the three most widely used models to describe the rheology of viscoplastic materials commonly encountered in practice. Despite the importance of these fluids in many industrial applications, such as oil and gas extraction, plastic melts processing, physiological flows, etc., it was only recently that studies of the flow of such fluids was undertaken. A finite differences based method is presented for the solution of fluid mechanics and heat transfer problems related to the flow of purely viscous non-Newtonian fluids with or without a yield stress. The method is based on a block-implicit formulation of the discretized governing equations in which the continuity, momentum, and energy equations are all solved simultaneously along grid lines perpendicular to the main flow direction. The resulting strong coupling of the velocity and pressure fields leads to a robust algorithm that exhibits good convergence characteristics. A number of flow problems have been solved involving both attached and separated flows of power-law, Bingham, and Herschel-Bulkley fluids demonstrating the ability of a finite-differences based method to efficiently and accurately solve such problems.

OSTI ID:
485088
Report Number(s):
CONF-970146--; ISBN 1-890277-03-7
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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