Assessment of RANS Turbulence Models for Straight Cooling Ducts: Secondary Flow and Strong Property Variation Effects

Abstract

We present well-resolved RANS simulations of two generic asymmetrically heated cooling channel configurations, a high aspect ratio cooling duct operated with liquid water at $$Re_b = 110 \times 10^3$$ and a cryogenic transcritical channel operated with methane at $$Re_b = 16 \times 10^3$$. The former setup serves to investigate the interaction of turbulence-induced secondary flow and heat transfer, and the latter to investigate the influence of strong non-linear thermodynamic property variations in the vicinity of the critical point on the flow field and heat transfer. To assess the accuracy of the RANS simulations for both setups, well-resolved implicit LES simulations using the adaptive local deconvolution method as subgrid-scale turbulence model serve as comparison databases. The investigation focuses on the prediction capabilities of RANS turbulence models for the flow as well as the temperature field and turbulent heat transfer with a special focus on the turbulent heat flux closure influence.