Numerical solutions for the fluid flow and the heat transfer of viscoplastic-type non-Newtonian fluids

Abstract

The aim of this work is to provide numerical solutions for the fluid flow and the heat transfer generated in closed systems containing viscoplastic-type non-Newtonian fluids. A lid driven cavity (LDC) and a differentially heated cavity (DHC) are used as test cases. These numerical solutions can be an appropriate tool for verifying CFD codes which have been developed or adapted to deal with this kind of non-Newtonian fluids. In order to achieve this objective, an in-house CFD code has been implemented and correctly verified by the method of manufactured solutions and by some numerical solutions too. Furthermore, a high-performance CFD code (Termo Fluids S.L.) has been adapted and properly verified, by the corresponding numerical solutions, to deal with this kind of non-Newtonian fluids. The viscoplastic behaviour of certain non-Newtonian fluids will be generated from a viscous stress which has been defined by a potential-type rheological law. The pseudoplastic and dilatant behaviours will be studied. On this matter, the influence of different physical aspects on the numerical simulations will be analysed, e.g. different exponent values in the potential-type rheological law and different values of the non-dimensional numbers. Moreover, the influence of different numerical aspects on the numerical simulations will also be analysed, e.g. unstructured meshes, conservative numerical schemes and more efficient and parallel algorithms and solvers. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.