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Turbulence Statistics of Thermo-Buoyancy Supercritical Fuel Flow in a Regenerative Cooling Channel

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Abstract

Active regenerative cooling with supercritical hydrocarbon fuel is considered as the most promising thermal protection method. The existence of buoyancy force would lead to strongly anisotropic flow and thermal transport characteristics. It is closely related to the cooling performance of the engine. To elucidate the mechanisms of turbulent transport, the large eddy simulation (LES) was performed to assess turbulence statistics within different turbulence scales. The results indicated that the buoyancy and inertial force together dominated the change of turbulent structure. Moreover, the spatial thermal buoyancy effect significantly suppressed the vertical velocity fluctuation. This is due to the laminar motion caused by the buoyancy force, thereby weakening the thermal transport. For the statistics of velocity fluctuation, it was found that the buoyancy force and inertial force greatly weaken the vertical and streamwise velocity fluctuation, respectively. For the statistics of thermal transport, the results pointed out that the near-wall heat transport characteristics need to be paid more attention. The thickness of the temperature mixing boundary layer led to the attenuation of vertical heat flux, which inhibited vertical temperature diffusion and predisposed to extreme conditions of heat transfer deterioration. The results can enhance the academic understanding of the heat transfer mechanism of supercritical fluids, and give guidance for further applications of thermal protection.

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Abbreviations

C s :

Smagorinsky constant

c p :

specific heat/J·(kg·K)−1

g :

gravitational acceleration/m·s−2

Gr :

Grashof number

Gr* :

Grashof number based on heat flux

H :

height of channel/m

l :

characteristic length/m

l s :

mesh element length scale/m

m :

mass flow rate/kg·s−1

P :

Pressure/Pa

Re :

Reynolds number

S ij :

strain rate tensor/s−1

T :

temperature/K

u :

velocity/m·s−1

W :

width diameter of channel/m

w :

velocity component/m

x :

coordinate/m

x i :

coordinate/m

y :

coordinate/m

y + :

dimensionless wall distance

z :

coordinate/m

β :

volumetric coefficient of expansion/K−1

Δ:

local grid scale/m

δ ij :

Kronecker delta

k :

von Karman constant

λ :

thermal conductivity/W·(m·K)−1

μ :

dynamic viscosity/Pa·s

ρ :

density/kg·m−3

SGS:

sub-grid stress

w:

wall

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51676163), the National 111 Proj ect under Grant No. B18041.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Feng Sun & Gongnan Xie

  2. Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Feng Sun

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  1. Feng Sun
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  2. Gongnan Xie
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gongnan Xie.

Ethics declarations

XIE Gongnan is an editorial board member for Journal of Thermal Science and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there are no competing interests.

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Sun, F., Xie, G. Turbulence Statistics of Thermo-Buoyancy Supercritical Fuel Flow in a Regenerative Cooling Channel. J. Therm. Sci. 33, 126–137 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1876-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1876-x

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