Two fluid modeling of heat transfer in dense suspension flows in Couette cells
Two fluid modeling of heat transfer in dense suspension flows in Couette cells
We propose a two fluid model (TFM) to capture thermal transport coupled to particle migration in shear flows of suspensions in the non-Brownian regime. Specifically, we introduce a closure relation for the inter-phase heat transfer coefficient. Importantly, we capture shear-induced effects by using the full tensor for strain rate, which is made possible by use of a TFM. We successfully calibrate the closure relation (and, thus, the TFM) by comparing to experiments in a Couette cell. Next, we perform a parametric study to understand how radial shear-induced migration influences the thermal transport performance in this system for different shear rates set by the rotation of the inner cylinder, particle diameters, and bulk volume fraction. Compared to a clear fluid, suspensions enhance thermal transport, and our computational model identifies the combinations of parameters that maximize transport and/or efficiency.