Heat transfer characteristics of flow past a rectangular protruding body

Flow over a protruding body is an attractive research field in thermal engineering. In the present study, laminar flow over a protruding body is considered. Unsteady two-dimensional Navier-Strokes and energy equations are solved numerically using a control volume approach. The heat transfer characteristics due to vortex shedding are examined in detail. The flow and heat transfer characteristics are compared with their counterparts obtained from the steady flow case. The entropy analysis is carried out and irreversibility generated because of fluid friction is computed. The relative heat transfer and irreversibility ratios are introduced to compare the heat transfer performance characteristics of unsteady and steady flow cases. It is found that the relative heat transfer ratio attains higher value, whereas relative irreversibility ratio becomes less for unsteady flow as compared with that obtained for the steady flow case.