Modeling and Simulations of Deteriorated Turbulent Heat Transfer in Wall-Heated Cylindrical Tube

This paper discusses the modeling and simulations of deteriorated turbulent heat transfer (DTHT) for a wall-heated fluid flows, which can be observed in gas-cooled nuclear power reactors during pressurized conduction cooldown (PCC) event due to loss of force circulation flow. The DTHT regime is defined as the deterioration of normal turbulent heat transport due to increase of acceleration and buoyancy forces. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools such as Nek5000 and STAR-CCM+ can help to analyze the DTHT phenomena in reactors for efficient thermal-fluid designs. Three-dimensional (3D) CFD nonisothermal modeling and simulations were performed in a wall-heated circular tube. The simulation results were validated with two different CFD tools, Nek5000 and STAR-CCM+, and validated with an experimental data. The predicted bulk temperatures were identical in both CFD tools, as expected. Good agreement between simulated results and measured data were obtained for wall temperatures along the tube axis using Nek5000. In STAR-CCM+, the under-predicted wall temperatures were mainly due to higher turbulence in the wall region. In STAR-CCM+, the predicted DTHT was over 48% at outlet when compared to inlet heat transfer values.