Numerical study on flow and heat transfer of aviation kerosene at supercritical pressure in cooling channels with surface corrugations

Abstract

In this paper, turbulent flow of aviation kerosene at supercritical pressure through cooling channels respectively with streamwise sinusoidal corrugation, spanwise sinusoidal corrugation and streamwise and spanwise coupled sinusoidal corrugations are numerically studied. The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes method with RNG k − ε turbulence model is used to perform numerical simulation. The independence of grids is first examined, and the numerical results are compared with experimental data for validation. The present results show that the streamwise corrugation significantly improves convective heat transfer performance of cooling channels, the increase ratio of Nusselt number and Thermal Performance Factor reaches 20.44% and 6.7%. With the streamwise and spanwise corrugations coupling, the increase ratio of Nusselt number and Thermal Performance Factor are both larger than those in cooling channels with only streamwise corrugation. Furthermore, the results of flow and heat transfer of aviation kerosene at supercritical conditions with corrugations effect show that corrugations can eliminate heat transfer deterioration occurring at supercritical conditions. The present study is aimed to provide useful references for cooling optimization with wall microstructures for engineering applications.