Experimental study on convection heat transfer properties in rough-walled fractures of granite: The effect of fracture roughness

Abstract

The fracture-dominated convection heat transfer behavior is commonly involved in the development, utilization and storage of thermal energy in fractured rock engineering. An experimental system assembled by a peristaltic pump drive, a liquid preheater and an electric blast drying oven is developed to quantify the effect of fracture roughness on the convection heat transfer characteristics. The overall heat transfer coefficient (OHTC) and the amount of heat transfer quantity from six fracture samples with different inlet temperatures and flow rates are calculated by the data acquisition at five observation points. In general, the average convective heat transfer efficiency between water and rock decreases gradually with time, and then enters a stage of thermal equilibrium while the temperatures at the five observation points become constant. The increasing flow rate can lead to the gradual increase of the OHTC and the slowdown of its growth rate. The OHTC is negatively correlated with the inlet temperature. With the increase of fracture surface roughness, the dominant flow effect is significantly enhanced, which leads to the weakening of heat transfer characteristics and the gradual reduction of OHTC. Finally, the heat transfer quantity decreases with the increase of roughness, and exists an inflection point with the flow rate.