Development and Assessment of an Isotropic Four-Equation Model for Heat Transfer of Low Prandtl Number Fluids

Abstract

In the simple gradient diffusion hypothesis, the turbulent Prandtl number (Prt) with a constant of 0.85 is difficult to accurately predict for liquid metals having low Prandtl numbers (Pr), while a four-equation model can improve this solution by introducing the turbulence time-scale into the calculation of turbulent thermal diffusivity. However, the four-equation model’s transport form and numerical stability are so complex that suitable commercial code is lacking. Therefore, an isotropic four-equation model with simple Dirichlet wall boundary conditions is built in the present work. Based on the open-source computational fluid dynamics program OpenFOAM, the fully developed velocity, temperature, Reynolds stress, and heat flux of low Pr fluids (Pr = 0.01–0.05) in the parallel plane are obtained by numerical simulation. The results show that the time-average statistics predicted using the present four-equation model are in good agreement with the direct numerical simulation data. Then, the isotropic four-equation model is used to analyze the flow and heat of liquid metal (Pr = 0.01) in a quadrilateral infinite rod bundle. The numerical results are compared with the various and available experimental relationships. The Nusselt numbers calculated using the isotropic four-equation model are betweenness the available correlations, while the turbulent Prandtl number model using a constant of 0.85 over predicts heat transfer. More detailed local heat transfer phenomena and distribution of low Pr fluids are obtained using the present isotropic four-equation model.