Experimental and computational study of convective heat fluxes in swirling two‐phase flows

Abstract

The convective mode of heat transfer is mainly due to the bulk motion of the fluid. Its turbulent nature and enhanced heat transfer coefficients have always attracted the academic, scientific community, and industrialists for many decades. The current research is based on the experimental and theoretical investigations on the turbulent convective heat transfer in swirling (60–300 rpm) steam (1–3 bars) injection into cocurrently flowing water. An exponential increase in the convective heat transfers up till the most swollen part of the swirling steam‐water volume of fluids has been observed. However, the convective heat transfer of the remaining part of the steam's plume shows an almost stagnant decreasing trend. The range of Rayleigh number that supports the transition in trends of the convective heat fluxes is 2.84 × 1011–3.71 × 1011. This transition affects the magnitude of the convective heat fluxes and the extent of the effective momentum fluxes, which is evident in the dominant role of the flow instabilities acting across the length of the steam's plume. Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis also has supported the exhibition of the heat fluxes magnitudes under the influence of the interacting Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities and inertial instabilities across and along with the cocurrently acting shear layer.