Numerical study on passive convective mass transfer enhancement

Abstract

Passive mixing mechanisms are widely used for heat and mass transfer enhancement. Vortices generated in flowfield lead to gradients that favour convective mass transfer. Computations on enhancement of convective mass transfer of sublimating solid fuel by baroclinic torque generated vortices in the wake of a swept ramp placed in high speed flow is presented here. Advection Upstream Splitting Method (AUSM) based computational scheme employed in the present study, to solve compressible turbulent flow field involving species transport, could capture the complex flow features resulted by vortex boundary layer and shock boundary layer interactions. Convective mass transfer is found to get improved in regions near boundary layer by horseshoe vortex and further transported to other regions by counter rotating vortex pair. Vortices resulted by flow expansion near aft wall of wedge and recompression wave-boundary layer interactions also promotes convective mass transport. Extensive computations have been carried out to reveal the role of vortices dominance at various lateral sweep angles in promotion of convective mass transfer in turbulent boundary layer.