Investigation of hydraulic resistance and heat transfer in the flow of HE-XE mixture with a small Prandtl number in a quasi-triangular pipe

Abstract

In this work, the process of heat transfer during the flow of gas mixtures (He-Xe) in a thin-walled quasi-triangular pipe is considered experimentally and numerically. The pipe cross-section corresponds to the shape of the channel formed by the dense packing of reactor rods for generating heat at the power plant. A helium-xenon mixture with a Prandtl number of 0.23 is used as the working fluid. Temperature distributions of the heated wall are obtained in the range of Reynolds numbers from 2860 to 39,800. The influence of the laminar-turbulent transition at the initial section of the pipe and high-velocity turbulent flow at the outlet on the wall temperature distribution along the channel is analyzed. The simulation data on heat transfer are generalized using the mass-average reduction temperature as the determining temperature, which allows correct consideration of gas compressibility at high flow velocities.