Heat Transfer Modulation by Inertial Particles in Particle-Laden Turbulent Channel Flow

Abstract

We study the effects of particle-turbulence interactions on heat transfer in a particle-laden turbulent channel flow using an Eulerian–Lagrangian simulation approach, with direct numerical simulation (DNS) for turbulence and Lagrangian tracking for particles. A two-way coupling model is employed in which the momentum and energy exchange between the discrete particles and the continuous fluid phase is fully taken into account. Our study focuses on the modulations of the temperature field and heat transfer process by inertial particles with different particle momentum Stokes numbers (St), which in a combination of the particle-to-fluid specific heat ratio and the Prandtl number results in different particle heat Stokes numbers. It is found that as St increases, while the turbulent heat flux decreases due to the suppression of wall-normal turbulence velocity fluctuation, the particle feedback heat flux increases significantly and results in an increase in the total heat flux. The particle thermal feedback effect is illustrated using the instantaneous structures and statistics of the flow and temperature fields. The mechanisms of heat transfer modulation by inertial particles are investigated in detail. The budget of turbulent heat flux is examined. Moreover, by taking advantage of the ability of numerical simulation to address different momentum and heat processes separately, we investigate in detail the two processes of particles affecting heat transfer for the first time, namely the direct effect of particle thermal feedback to the fluid (i.e., heat feedback) and the indirect effect of the modulation of turbulent velocity field induced by the particles (i.e., momentum feedback). It is found that the contribution of heat transfer from turbulent convection is reduced by both heat and momentum feedback due to the decrease of the turbulent heat flux. The contribution of heat transfer from particle transport effects is barely influenced by the momentum feedback, even if St is large and is mainly affected by the heat feedback. Our results indicate that both heat and momentum feedback are important when the particle inertia is large, suggesting that both feedback processes need to be taken into account in computation and modeling.