Convective Heat Transfer Simulation Tool

As a final project for my course in heat transfer I developed a simulation tool to simulate 2D convective heat transfer for unsteady, incompressible, low reynolds number flows over an object of arbitrary geometry and thermal properties. 

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Coded in MATLAB, the program uses the Psi-Omega approach for calculating the flow over an object. The Stream function is calculated iteratively through a finite-difference approximation, and the values of vorticity and temperature are time stepped using finite-difference approximations of the governing energy and momentum equations.

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The generation of a vortex street from flow over a cylinder was used to verify the simulation’s results. The tool was then used to perform some basic analyses of convective heat transfer from the fins of a heat exchanger. In the future, this tool could be expanded easily to examine any number of object geometries, cooling/heating methods, etc.