Influence of trip wires on turbulence and vorticity for a cylinder bluff body

Bluff bodies have been extensively studied across various industries, including aerospace, civil, mechanical, and offshore engineering, owing to their widespread applications. This study focuses on enhancing heat transfer from duct walls by inducing intense flow vorticity downstream of cylindrical bluff bodies. Trip wires are employed on these bodies, arranged in an infinite array, with wire angles ranging from 45⁰ to 135⁰, within a cooling duct. The objective is to investigate the impact of turbulence enhancement on heat transfer performance, wake formation, and vorticity behavior in a flow channel featuring an infinite array configuration. OpenFoam software has been used to solve governing equations with prescribed boundary conditions, followed by postprocessing the data in Paraview and Octave software. Observations reveal that trip wires significantly modify flow transition and wake development downstream of the bluff body, resulting in enhanced turbulence within the channel. Trip wires positioned at a separation angle of 85⁰ have a pronounced effect on the evolution of turbulent flow in the wake region, promoting greater flow mixing, which accelerates convective heat transfer along the streamwise direction and improves the local Nusselt number on the wall surface. The shedding frequency analysis shows the highest peak occurring at the 85⁰ separation angle. Overall, the numerical results highlight the influence of heat transfer generation in relation to all variables examined in this study.