Work

A convective heat‐transfer model for non‐spherical particles based on SuperDEM – CFD from direct numerical simulation

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Predicting convective heat transfer for non‐spherical particles is challenging due to the coupled effects of shape and orientation. This study performs particle‐resolved direct numerical simulations for ellipsoids, cylinders, and cuboids across a wide range of aspect ratios (ARs) and attack angles. Regional thermal analyses identify crosswise sphericity as the key geometric factor governing stagnation‐zone transport, while overall sphericity accounts for the available surface area. To unify these coupled effects, a composite descriptor combining both sphericities is proposed, which successfully collapses data from all investigated geometries. Leveraging this descriptor, a mechanism‐based correlation and four machine‐learning models were developed. For unseen conditions, the mechanism‐based correlation achieved mean absolute percentage errors below 5%, whereas the shape‐specific correlations reduced the errors to below 3%. Machine‐learning models provided higher in‐domain accuracy but showed limited extrapolation capability, with back propagation neural network performing best for Reynolds‐number extrapolation but deteriorating at AR = 6.

Source: AIChE Journal

DOI: 10.1002/aic.70702

Authors: Hairui Lin, Jianjian Dai, Zhuohan Li, Zhi Zhang, Riwei Wei, Yan Wang, Haotian Wu, Lijun Wang, Xi Gao, Youwei Cheng

Institutions: Zhejiang University, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows

Subfield: Ocean Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province

OpenAlex ID: W7225184451

FWCI:

Cites: 48

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Related to: 10