The Turbulent Flows of Supercritical Fluids with Heat Transfer

Abstract

Serious heat-transfer deterioration may occur in fluids at supercritical pressure owing to the effects of buoyancy, flow acceleration, and significant variations in thermophysical properties. Although there have been numerous experimental studies on this subject, no single heat-transfer correlation has been found to be capable of describing this phenomenon accurately. Relatively few experimental studies have been carried out on the fluid mechanics of supercritical flows because of the technical difficulties of dealing with turbulent flows and high heat fluxes simultaneously. Conversely, many computational fluid dynamics studies have examined a number of low-Reynolds-number turbulence models. However, none have reproduced the buoyancy production of turbulence reasonably well because of limitations with the use of a constant turbulent Prandtl number. Direct numerical simulations may provide more insight into the physics of fluids at supercritical pressure within a limited range of flow and heat-transfer conditions.