Studying the flow dynamics and heat transfer of stranded conductor cables using large eddy simulations

Abstract

Stranded cables are widely used in applications where their heat transfer and fluid dynamics are important, but they have not been extensively studied. This paper investigates, using large eddy simulations with the dynamic Smagorinsky sub-grid scale model, a helically wound stranded conductor cable in comparison to a circular cylinder at a Reynolds number of 1000 and Prandtl number of 0.7. The cylinder and the cable were normal to the flow. The triply decomposed heat transport equations were derived, and proper orthogonal decomposition was applied to the fluctuating vorticity and temperature fields to determine the total, coherent, and incoherent terms in the heat transport equations. The results showed that the stranded cable, relative to circular cylinder, has (i) three-dimensional mean flow and heat transfer, especially within and around recirculation region, (ii) 9% higher drag and 8% higher base pressure magnitude, (iii) near-stagnant flow in the gaps between the strands, which results in a significant variation in the local Nusselt number, (iv) ∼15% lower span-wise averaged local Nusselt number in the attached boundary layer, suggesting that surface modifications should be addressed to enhance heat transfer, (v) ∼36° variation in the separation angle along the span, (vi) 12% higher turbulent kinetic energy and 39% higher spanwise normal Reynolds stresses, (vii) insignificant difference in shedding frequency, suggesting similar flow induced vibrations to the cylinder, (viii) asymmetry in the flow and heat fields around the x axis, (ix) significantly different coherent temperature fields and dynamics, and (x) in general, high heat energy transport close to the cable rear side.