Refrigeration and Air - Conditioning Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai - 600 036 (India)
*Current Address: Sr. Engineer, Advanced Engineering, Ashok Leyland Ltd., Chennai-600035. E-mail: kishore.alc@ashokleyland.com
**Corresponding author: E-mail: ssmurthy@iitm.ac.in
An analysis is carried out for the freezing in a cylindrical container. Governing equations for the momentum and energy transfer are solved simultaneously considering the solid, mushy and liquid regions using commercial CFD software FLUENT 6. Effects of Aspect ratio on the rate of the freezing are presented. The comparative studies are made between Aspect ratios considering the effects of “conduction – only” and “conduction – convection” only. The effects of wall temperature and properties variation in the mushy region are studies. Also, in order to study the influence of the mushy region in Aspect ratio on freezing rate, simulation are performed by varying the temperature ranges within which the mushy zone exists for the case when top and bottom of the container is insulated. Results show that with the increase in Aspect ratio freezing time decreases. Effect of natural convection for lower value of the Aspect ratio is influencing. Also with the increase in the mushy zone temperature range the rate of freezing decreases for all the Aspect ratio and the effect is more influencing for lower value of Aspect ratio.
Freezing, Natural Convection, Mushy Region
