A Logarithmic Turbulent Heat Transfer Model in Applications with Liquid Metals for <i>Pr</i> = 0.01–0.025

• Main Authors: Roberto Da Vià, Valentina Giovacchini, Sandro Manservisi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-06-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: turbulent heat transfer; low-Prandtl fluids; RANS modeling; logarithmic turbulence model
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/12/4337

The study of turbulent heat transfer in liquid metal flows has gained interest because of applications in several industrial fields. The common assumption of similarity between the dynamical and thermal turbulence, namely, the Reynolds analogy, has been proven to be invalid for these fluids. Many methods have been proposed in order to overcome the difficulties encountered in a proper definition of the turbulent heat flux, such as global or local correlations for the turbulent Prandtl number and four parameter turbulence models. In this work we assess a four parameter logarithmic turbulence model for liquid metals based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RAN) approach. Several simulation results considering fluids with <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mrow> <mi>P</mi> <mi>r</mi> <mo>=</mo> <mn>0</mn> <mo>.</mo> <mn>01</mn> </mrow> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mrow> <mi>P</mi> <mi>r</mi> <mo>=</mo> <mn>0</mn> <mo>.</mo> <mn>025</mn> </mrow> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> are reported in order to show the validity of this approach. The Kays turbulence model is also assessed and compared with integral heat transfer correlations for a wide range of Peclet numbers.