Theoretical profiles of two-phase transcritical laminar boundary layer near the Widom line

Abstract

Boundary layers can be defined as sub-, trans-, and supercritical regime according to whether their temperature profiles cross the Widom line. The transcritical boundary layers which contain liquid and supercritical phases are hard to solve. In this paper, adiabatic flat plate laminar boundary layers of supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) are preliminarily explored by the self-similar solution. We analyze the difference of boundary layer profiles at 8 MPa - inflow pressure by varying inflow temperature Te and Mach number Ma. The influence of Te and Ma on the velocity profiles exhibits complex diversity at three boundary layer regimes. Compared with subcritical and supercritical boundary layers, transcritical boundary layers with smaller skin friction coefficients are the most special, and they include the “sub-layer”. Notably, there is no transcritical boundary layer when Te increases to pseudo-critical temperature Tpc at small Ma. The wall temperature Tw of transcritical boundary layers may be greater than inflow total temperature T0 at larger Ma.