Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Supercritical N-Decane in Adjacent Cooling Channels with Opposite Flow Directions

Dongpeng Jia,Ning Wang,Yu Pan,Shiwei Wang,Kai Yang,Chaoyang Liu,Jian Liu

doi:10.3390/en14041071

Dongpeng Jia, Ning Wang + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en14041071

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Abstract

To ensure the safety of a scramjet, an arrangement scheme of adjacent regenerative cooling channels with opposite flow directions is adopted to decrease the maximum wall temperature. Based on extended corresponding-state methods, the flow and heat transfer characteristics of supercritical n-decane in cooling channels with same and opposite flow directions under a pressure of 3 MPa are comprehensively investigated in this paper. Compared to adjacent cooling channels with same flow direction, the local maximum wall temperature in adjacent cooling channels with opposite directions is notably reduced. Moreover, the effects of the heat flux and gravity on the development of flow field are analysed. A pair of recirculation zones is found close to the bottom wall of the cooling channels along the flow direction, the scale of which greatly expands with increasing heat flux. Once the heat flux density reaches a critical value, a phenomenon of flow asymmetry occurs. In addition, the small recirculation zones induced by the buoyancy force narrow when the gravity and heat flux directions remain the same, and the gravity effect could inhibit the generation of small-scale vortices and flow asymmetry.

Highlights

To ensure that the first grid layer adjacent to the wall of the fluid domain satisfies the requirement of y + < 1, the thickness of the first mesh layer near the wall of the fluid domain and the growth rate towards the centre area are set to 0.002 mm and 1.05, respectively
According to the thermophysical properties of n-decane, as shown in Figure 4, we found that the density of n-decane decreases with increasing temperature
The flow and heat transfer characteristics of supercritical n-decane in adjacent cooling channels with the same and opposite flow directions are analysed in terms of the fluid and wall temperatures

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Due to the outstanding performance, hypersonic vehicles have become an important development direction of contemporary aviation technology [1,2,3]. As the propulsion system of most hypersonic vehicles, the scramjet engine works in a harsh thermal environment. The thermal protection technique of combustor is one of the key technologies of scramjets

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