TY - JOUR
TI - Discussion on improved method of turbulence model for supercritical water flow and heat transfer
AU - Wang Zhenchuan
AU - Qi Guoli
AU - Li Meijun
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2020
VL - 24
IS - 5
SP - 2729
EP - 2741
PT - Article
AB - The turbulence model fails in supercritical fluid-flow and heat transfer simulation, owing to the drastic change of thermal properties. The inappropriate buoyancy effect model and the improper turbulent Prandtl number model are several of these factors lead to the original low-Reynolds number turbulence model unable to predict the wall temperature for vertically heated tubes under the deteriorate heat transfer conditions. This paper proposed a simplified improved method to modify the turbulence model, using the generalized gradient diffusion hypothesis approximation model for the production term of the turbulent kinetic energy due to the buoyancy effect, using a turbulence Prandtl number model for the turbulent thermal diffusivity instead of the constant number. A better agreement was accomplished by the improved turbulence model compared with the experimental data. The main reason for the over-predicted wall temperature by the original turbulence model is the misuse of the buoyancy effect model. In the improved model, the production term of the turbulent kinetic energy is much higher than the results calculated by the original turbulence model, especially in the boundary-layer. A more accurate model for the production term of the turbulent kinetic energy is the main direction of further modification for the low Reynolds number turbulence model.