Impact of an oscillating guide vane on the thermo-hydraulic fields in a square cavity with single inlet and outlet ports

This study reports on a numerical investigation of the impact of an oscillating rigid plate guide vane on the transient behavior of thermo-hydraulic fields within a square cavity with single inlet and outlet ports. The computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS® FLUENT was employed to perform the numerical simulations. The numerical analysis focused on the effect of the frequency and amplitude of an oscillating rigid guide vane on modification of the transverse throughflow, internal flow re-distribution, re-arrangement of multiple rotating vortices and the ensuing heat transfer performance. According to the numerical results, it is shown that for a combination of the Strouhal number and amplitude of inclination angle of the guide vane, the instantaneous Nusselt number that is a measure of the thermal performance of the system exhibits cyclical changes once the respective periodic state was reached. Moreover, the cycle-averaged and peak-to-peak Nusselt number increases with the increase of the amplitude of oscillations as the frequency of oscillation is fixed. For a fixed amplitude of oscillation, the cycle-averaged and peak-to-peak Nusselt number decreases as the frequency increases. Instantaneous variations of the dimensionless pressure drop of the cavity also exhibited periodic oscillations. Enhancement of heat transfer due to oscillations of the guide vane was accompanied with the expense of increasing the pressure drop.