ScienceAsia 29 (2003): 155-162 |doi: 10.2306/scienceasia1513-1874.2003.29.155

Enhancement of Segregated Finite Element Method with Adaptive Meshing technique for Viscous Incompressible Thermal Flow Analysis

Niphon Wansophark^* and Pramote Dechaumphai^*

ABSTRACT: A segregated finite element algorithm is combined with a monotone streamline upwinding method for solving two-dimensional viscous incompressible thermal flow problems. The finite element equations are derived from a set of coupled nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations that consist of the conservation of mass, momentums and energy. The method uses the three-node triangular element with equal-order interpolations for all the variables of the velocity components, the pressure and the temperature. The finite element formulation is validated by developing a corresponding computer program and evaluated by examples of viscous incompressible thermal flows. These examples are the thermally driven flows in a square cavity and in the concentric cylinders. In addition, an adaptive meshing technique is also combined with the finite element algorithm to further increase solution accuracy, and at the same time, to minimize the computational time and computer memory requirement.

Download PDF

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University,
Patumwan, Bangkok, Thailand, 10330.

* Corresponding author, Email: niphon.w@eng.chula.ac.th, fmepdc@eng.chula.ac.th

Received 2 Aug 2002, Accepted 12 Dec 2002