The numerical investigation of effects of surface curvature on flow field

SUMMARY The Numerical Investigation of Effects of Surface Curvature on Flow Field During a fluid flow, the fluid usually contacts with the solid surfaces. These surfaces may be at different geometries; flat such as pipe or channel walls, inclined such as a diffuser wall, curved such as a bend or an airfoil. Surface curvature results in big changes in flow field. In practice, the investigation of these changes in flow field is very important. In this study, laminar flow fields over inclined surfaces and curved surfaces have numerically been investigated performing coordinate transformation from physical domain to computational domain. Flow in diffusers with the different slope angles, inclined step flow, flow over circular surface and flow in circular bend have been solved for different initial and boundary conditions by using a computer code formed according to the finite difference method. From these solutions, the velocity fields and the reverse flow region lengths have been predicted. Key Words : Laminar Flow, Steady Flow, Finite Difference Method, Reverse Flow Region, Curvilinear Coordinates, Coordinate Transformation.