STRONGLY COUPLED BLOCK-IMPLICIT SOLUTION TECHNIQUE FOR NON-NEWTONIAN CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER PROBLEMS

A finite-difference-based method is presented for the solution of fluid mechanics and convective heat transfer problems related to the flow of purely viscous non-Newtonian fluids with or without a yield stress. The method is based on a block-implicit formulation of the discretited governing equations in which the continuity, momentum, and energy equations are all solved simultaneously along grid lines. A number of flow problems have been solved involving both attached and separated flows of power-law, Bingham, and Herschel-Bulkley fluids, demonstrating a robust algorithm with the ability to solve such problems efficiently and accurately.