Large Eddy Simulations of Flow and Heat Transfer in Rotating Ribbed Duct Flows

Abstract

Large eddy simulations are performed in a periodic domain of a rotating square duct with normal rib turbulators. Both the Coriolis force as well as the centrifugal buoyancy force are included in this study. A direct approach is presented for the unsteady calculation of the non-dimensional temperature field in the periodic domain. The calculations are performed at a Reynolds number (Re) of 12, 500, a Rotation number (Ro) of 0.12 and an inlet coolant-to-wall density ratio (Δρ/ρ) of 0.13. The time-averaged Nusselt numbers compare satisfactorily with the data of Wagner et al. (J. Turbomachinery, Vol. 114, pp. 847–857). Time-sequences of the vorticity components and the temperature fields are presented to understand the flow physics and the unsteady heat transfer processes. Large scale coherent structures are seen to play an important role in the mixing and heat transfer. The temperature field appears to contain a low frequency mode that extends beyond a single inter-rib geometric module, and indicates the necessity of using at least two inter-rib modules for streamwise periodicity to be satisfied. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of 200 snapshots indicates a low dimensionality of this system with almost 99% of turbulent energy in the first 80 POD modes.