Optimal body force for heat transfer in turbulent vertical heated pipe flow

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Chu, Shijun, Marensi, Elena, Willis, Ashley P.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866912600528257024
author Chu, Shijun
Marensi, Elena
Willis, Ashley P.
author_facet Chu, Shijun
Marensi, Elena
Willis, Ashley P.
contents The vertical heated-pipe is widely used in thermal engineering applications, as buoyancy can help drive a flow, but several flow regimes are possible: shear-driven turbulence, laminarised flow, and convective turbulence. Steady velocity fields that maximise heat transfer have previously been calculated for heated pipe flow, but were calculated independently of buoyancy forces, and hence independently of the flow regime and time-dependent dynamics of the flow. In this work, a variational method is applied to find an optimal body force of limited magnitude that maximises heat transfer for the vertical arrangement, with the velocity field constrained by the full governing equations. In our calculations, mostly at Re=3000, it is found that streamwise-independent rolls remain optimal, as in previous steady optimisations, but that the optimal number of rolls and their radial position are dependent on the flow regime. Surprisingly, while it is generally assumed that turbulence enhances heat transfer, for the strongly forced case, time-dependence typically leads to a reduction. Beyond offering potential improvement through the targeting of the roll configuration for this application, wider implications are that optimisations under the steady flow assumption may overestimate improvements in heat transfer, and that strategies that simply aim to induce turbulence may not necessarily be efficient in enhancing heat transfer either. Including time-dependence and the full governing equations in the optimisation is challenging but offers further enhancement and improved reliability in prediction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_15891
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal body force for heat transfer in turbulent vertical heated pipe flow
Chu, Shijun
Marensi, Elena
Willis, Ashley P.
Fluid Dynamics
The vertical heated-pipe is widely used in thermal engineering applications, as buoyancy can help drive a flow, but several flow regimes are possible: shear-driven turbulence, laminarised flow, and convective turbulence. Steady velocity fields that maximise heat transfer have previously been calculated for heated pipe flow, but were calculated independently of buoyancy forces, and hence independently of the flow regime and time-dependent dynamics of the flow. In this work, a variational method is applied to find an optimal body force of limited magnitude that maximises heat transfer for the vertical arrangement, with the velocity field constrained by the full governing equations. In our calculations, mostly at Re=3000, it is found that streamwise-independent rolls remain optimal, as in previous steady optimisations, but that the optimal number of rolls and their radial position are dependent on the flow regime. Surprisingly, while it is generally assumed that turbulence enhances heat transfer, for the strongly forced case, time-dependence typically leads to a reduction. Beyond offering potential improvement through the targeting of the roll configuration for this application, wider implications are that optimisations under the steady flow assumption may overestimate improvements in heat transfer, and that strategies that simply aim to induce turbulence may not necessarily be efficient in enhancing heat transfer either. Including time-dependence and the full governing equations in the optimisation is challenging but offers further enhancement and improved reliability in prediction.
title Optimal body force for heat transfer in turbulent vertical heated pipe flow
topic Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15891