An immersed-boundary finite-volume method for simulation of heat transfer in complex geometries

An immersed boundary method for solving the Navier-Stokes and thermal energy equations is developed to compute the heat transfer over or inside the complex geometries in the Cartesian or cylindrical coordinates by introducing the momentum forcing, mass source/sink, and heat source/sink. The present method is based on the finite volume approach on a staggered mesh together with a fractional step method. The method of applying the momentum forcing and mass source/sink to satisfy the no-slip condition on the body surface is explained in detail in Kim, Kim and Choi (2001, Journal of Computational Physics). In this paper, the heat source/sink is introduced on the body surface or inside the body to satisfy the iso-thermal or iso-heat-flux condition on the immersed boundary. The present method is applied to three different problems : forced convection around a circular cylinder, mixed convection around a pair of circular cylinders, and forced convection around a main cylinder with a secondary small cylinder. The results show good agreements with those obtained by previous experiments and numerical simulations, verifying the accuracy of the present method.