INFLUENCE OF MODELING OF TURBULENCE IN THE FLOW PARAMETERS WITHIN A FOOD OVEN USING THE OPENFOAM®

Because of the better flexibility in warming and high production, the continuous furnace tunnel is the better option to the processing of industrialized food products. This study presents a numerical investigation of the effects of RANS turbulence modeling on the main parameters of the air flow inside a continuous oven with indirect heating - velocities, temperatures, streamlines and heat flows by convection and radiation. The geometry and operating conditions used for constructing the model, setting the mesh and initial and boundary conditions were obtained based on values of operating ovens. Modeling consider the hypothesis of air as an ideal gas, incompressible and Newtonian; the equations of continuity, momentum balance and energy in turbulent regime; closing model of two equations κ- ε and radiation model viewFactor. Utilized the free open source software OpenFOAM® for device modeling. The Rayleigh Number of the cavity was used to evaluate the treatment indicated to turbulence. Considering the results obtained, the inclusion of model κ- ε stabilized the velocity fields and temperatures around the average value. In relation to the heat exchanges involved, heat flow by convection on the mat showed negligible compared to the effects of radiation. Due to the discrepancy between the orders of magnitude of convection and radiation, it's difficult the precise evaluation of the first, because small fluctuations in temperature and velocity affect considerably and induce oscillations in their behavior. However, the radiation model attained good approximation the most relevant exchanges, showing a good chance their application in practical cases

ANALYSIS OF LAMINAR FORCED CONVECTION INSIDE A SQUARE VENTILATED CAVITY USING THE OPENFOAM®

Laminar forced convection inside a square cavity with inlet and outlet ports was numerically analyzed. The positions of the inlet and outlet ports were fixed and the ports sizes were equal 25% of the side wall. The influence of the Reynolds and Prandtl numbers on the flow and temperature fields inside the cavity was verified for nine cases, with Re = 50, 100 and 500 and Pr = 0.7, 3 and 5. The heat transfer process in the cavity was analyzed from obtained values for the average Nusselt number and the local Nusselt number on the walls. The open source computer package OpenFOAM® was used for simulations considering a two-dimensional flow. For all tested Prandtl numbers, there is a growth in the rotating vortex regions as Reynolds number is increases. The temperature fields are directly related to the presence of the rotating vortices and the temperature gradient is more noticeable at the interface sections of the throughflow stream with the neighboring vortices and the next to the walls for greater Reynolds and Prandtl numbers. It was verified that the local Nusselt number on the walls varies radically with minimum and maximum points and it is dependent on the flow and temperature fields adjacent to the respective wall. The results for average Nusselt number per wall indicated that the bottom wall is the most susceptible to variations in its average Nusselt number and that the top wall present higher values of this parameter for all tested cases. Finally, the average Nusselt number was increased with increasing the Reynolds and Prandtl numbers indicating the enhanced thermal exchange