Enhancement of convective heat transfer by electrically-induced swirling effect in laminar and fully-developed internal flows

A computational and experimental approach is undertaken to study the enhancement of convective heat transfer in fully-developed internal flows by an electrically-induced secondary flow field. Using longitudinal flat electrodes along a parallel-plate configuration, the corona discharge is employed to generate an electrically induced secondary flow on the cross section of the flow passage. The electrically-induced secondary flow forms a swirling flow field in the fully-developed condition and enhances the heat transfer significantly. The flow field was solved computationally and the results were verified and validated by grid refinement study and computational error analysis.