Flow and heat transfer in a rotating cavity with de-swirl nozzles: An LES study

Abstract

Large eddy simulation was applied for studying the flow and heat transfer characteristics in the rotating cavity with de-swirl nozzles. Simulations were performed at the rotational Reynolds number of 1.4 × 105 and nondimensional flow rate of 4040. Compared with vertical nozzle, de-swirl nozzle generates lower swirl ratio, pressure loss and Nusselt number. Distributions of radial velocity show that de-swirl nozzle generates lower velocity in the Ekman boundary layer, but higher velocity in the core region. In the corner region of shroud and jet, the ‘dead zone’ of coherent vortices exists for vertical nozzle. However, for de-swirl nozzle, the ‘dead zone’ disappears due to the impact of inclined injection, and accordingly, the scale of time-averaged counter-rotating vortex pair is reduced effectively. In the middle and lower sections of cavity, plenty of vortex stripes are formed both for vertical and de-swirl nozzles; however, in the Ekman layer, turbulent kinetic energy and Reynolds normal stress for vertical nozzle is much higher than de-swirl nozzle. The distributions of turbulent energy spectrum and energy integral length scale show that, for de-swirl nozzle, large-scale eddies take the dominant role in middle section, while small-scale eddies dominate the flow fields in upper and lower sections of cavity.