Bounds for conduction and forced convection heat transfer (Q1115285)

Bounds for heat transport in several classical problems of conduction and forced convection heat transfer are developed. The conduction bounds are based on a variational formulation, in which systematic enrichment and restriction of the space of candidate minimizing functions leads to lower and upper bounds, respectively. It is shown that the addition of insulator `cuts' results in a broadening of the space and therefore underestimation of transport, whereas the addition of superconductor cuts leads to contraction of the space and overestimation. Our results consitute formal proof of several theorems proposed by \textit{H. G. Elrod} [Trans. ASME J. Heat Transfer 65-70 (1974)]. An upper bound for forced convection heat transfer in turbulent plane Couette flow based on the method of horizontal averages and power integrals is also presented. In particular, it is shown that for fixed (given) momentum transport, the heat transfer rate from the wall can be bounded from above as a function of the Reynolds and Prandtl numbers. This relationship between shear stress and heat flux serves as theoretical support for Reynolds' momentum/heat transport analogy for turbulent non-separated flow.