A Preliminary Numerical Investigation of Thermal Mixing Efficiency in T-Junctions with Different Flow Configurations

Abstract

When hot and cold fluids flow through a converging T-junction, rapid temperature fluctuations occur in the mixing region due to the thermal mixing of fluids. This temperature fluctuation causes thermal fatigue, which is responsible for the shortening of service life in a T-junction. Hence, the design of T-junction for thermal mixing requires not only superior mixing performance but minimize thermal fluctuation during mixing is also desirable. The objective of the present paper is to determine the thermal mixing performance at the mixing region of T-junction with two different flow configurations. Water, at different inlet temperatures, is used as a working medium and is assumed incompressible. Two types of flow configurations, namely intersecting and colliding regular T-junction with a sidearm pointing at 12 o’clock position have been evaluated in this paper. Realizable k-epsilon turbulence model was assumed, and its validity benchmarked against RANS and RSM-EB turbulence models. The thermal mixing efficiency of both flow configurations is calculated and compared. The results show that the thermal mixing efficiency of both intersecting and colliding mixing tee increases with the increase of distance and time. Intersecting tee shows higher temperature fluctuation than colliding tee at the mixing outlet, but colliding tee shows higher thermal mixing efficiency than intersecting mixing tee.