Numerical analysis of flow and thermal fields in arbitrary eccentric annulus by differential quadrature method

Abstract

In the present paper, natural convective heat transfer in horizontal eccentric annulus is numerically studied by applying the differential quadrature (DQ) method to solve the vorticity-stream function formulation. An explicit formulation for computing the stream function value on the inner cylinder wall is derived from the pressure single-value condition. It is demonstrated in this paper that the DQ method is an efficient approach in computing the weak global circulation in the domain. The present method was validated by comparing its numerical results with available experimental data. Very good agreement has been achieved. Then, a systematic study is conducted for the effect of eccentricity and angular position on the flow and thermal fields.