Experimental study on the unusual turbulence intensity distributions in rod-to-wall gap regions

Abstract

The phenomenon of unusual turbulence intensity distributions in closely spaced rod bundles was experimentally studied. Fully developed turbulence intensities in rod-to-wall gap regions, formed by a single rod regularly mounted in a trapezoidal duct, were measured with a hot-wire anemometer. Starting from a rod setting giving a small bottom rod-to-wall gap, a series of gap spacings were achieved by moving the rod upward, resulting in larger bottom gaps and at the same time smaller top gaps. A region of high turbulence kinetic energy occurred first in the bottom gap region corresponding to the small bottom gap spacing and then shifted to the top gap region for the cases of small top gap spacings. There was no evidence of a high kinetic energy patch when the top gap size was extremely small. To unveil the mechanism behind this phenomenon, measurements on secondary velocities and energy spectra were conducted for one rod setting, and these results are described in detail. It was found that the measured secondary flow patterns could not explain the abnormal turbulence intensity distributions. However, energy density spectra revealed certain peak frequencies that support the argument that cross-gap large-scale eddy motion is of importance as both a transport process and production mechanism for subchannels formed by closely spaced rod bundles.