Experimental investigation on heat transfer enhancement of supercritical pressure aviation kerosene in tubular laminar flow by vibration

Abstract

In advanced aero-engine thermal management systems, aviation kerosene serving as a coolant unavoidably works in a vibration environment. In this article, the laminar heat transfer performance of Chinese aviation kerosene RP-3 flowing through a horizontal micro-tube under various vibration conditions at supercritical pressures was investigated experimentally. The effects of several impact factors such as system pressure, heat flux, mass flux, inlet temperature, vibration acceleration, and vibration frequency on the heat transfer enhancement were explored in a systematic manner. Experimental results indicate that: (i) the vibration could lead to intense thermal and momentum mixing among different boundary layers of tubular laminar flow and significantly strengthens the heat transfer, and the higher Re can lead to a stronger enhancement effect. The maximum observed HTER across all experimental data is 2.8, occurring at x/d = 224.1 with the inlet temperature of 373 K; (ii) HTER hardly changes with system pressures, exhibiting a maximum relative deviation of 3.9 % at different pressures. Heat transfer enhancement has a strong dependency on heat flux, as the heat flux increases from 36 kW/m2 to 108 kW/m2, the average HTC increased by up to 36.4 %; (iii) the HTC and HTER monotonically rise with increasing vibration acceleration. Peak values in HTC and HTER are observed at vibration frequencies of 625 Hz, 191 Hz, and 242 Hz; (iv) vibration has little impact on the thermal acceleration but noticeably weakens the buoyancy close to the outlet area at high heat flux. Two well-predicted correlations for the Nu in tubular laminar flow, one with vibration and one without, are proposed.