CFD modeling and experimental validation of heat and mass transfer in wood poles subjected to high temperatures: a conjugate approach

In this article, a coupling method is presented in the case of high thermal treatment of a wood pole and a three-dimensional numerical simulation is proposed. The conservation equations for the wood sample are obtained using diffusion equation with variables diffusion coefficients and the incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations have been solved for the flow field. The connection between the two problems is achieved by expressing the continuity of the state variables and their respective fluxes through the interface. Turbulence closure is obtained by the use of the standard k–ɛ model with the usual wall function treatment. The model equations are solved numerically by the commercial package ANSYS-CFX10. The wood pole was subjected to high temperature treatment under different operating conditions. The model validation is carried out via a comparison between the predicted values with those obtained experimentally. The comparison of the numerical and experimental results shows good agreement, implying that the proposed numerical algorithm can be used as a useful tool in designing high-temperature wood treatment processes. A parametric study was also carried out to determine the effects of several parameters such as initial moisture content, wood aspect ratio and final gas temperature on temperature and moisture content distributions within the samples during heat treatment.