Thermodynamic performance and flow structures analysis of supercritical CO2 applied in a regenerative cooling channel mounted with mini-ribs

Abstract

Supercritical CO2 (SCO2) is regarded as a promising supplementary coolant for traditional regenerative cooling at extremely high flight speed (Ma ≥8) due to its superior heat and mass transfer capability. Using sCO2 as the coolant, mini-ribs is introduced to the rectangular regenerative cooling channel to solve the difficulties in transferring enough heat from near walls to core mainstream at a heat flux of 5 MW/m2 in this paper. With the thermophysical properties near the supercritical point interpolated in the solver, flow structures and heat transfer performance in the cooling channels are obtained using a validated k-ω SST turbulence model. Effects of pitch ratios, channel materials and acceleration and buoyancy effects are also investigated in terms of the local bulk heat transfer coefficients, Fanning friction factors and entropy generation numbers by heat transfer and fluid flow. Overall, the existing of mini-ribs improves the heat transfer coefficient and reduces the entropy number by heat transfer at the cost of the increased fluid friction and the corresponding entropy number. Compared with the smooth channel, the overall enhanced factor can reach 1.73 with an overall thermal performance factor of 1.43 and the maximum wall temperature decreases by 27.57 % in the case of P/e = 10. When the solid channel material has higher thermal conductivity, it leads to a more uniform temperature distribution and lower entropy generation number by heat transfer with the enhanced transverse heat conduction within solid walls which also leads large heat transfer coefficients. Larger accelerations result in stronger heat transfer and larger fluid friction by strengthening the buoyancy effect which is more obvious when the state approach the critical point. This work provides a good reference for the application of supercritical CO2 in a regenerative cooling channel of scramjet engine at extremely high heat flux.