Experimental Investigation of Convective Heat Transfer of Supercritical Pressure Hydrocarbon Fuel in a Horizontal Section of a Rotating U-Duct

The experimental and numerical investigations of the heat transfer of supercritical pressure n-decane flowing through a pipe at various rotational speeds, mass flow rates, heat fluxes, and pressures, are presented. This pipe is 2 mm in diameter, 200 mm in length, with a radius of 0.328 m, and is parallel to the rotating axis. The wall temperature was measured at four positions around the periphery of the pipe at each of the five selected cross section along the pipe's length. Maximum convective heat transfer was observed at the outer edge of the horizontal section, while its corresponding minimum was observed at the inner edge. The heat transfers at the two sides of the channel were observed to be similar. The density and pressure differences between the outer and inner edges increased at increasing rotating speeds. However, the temperature difference between the outer and inner edges decreased with increased rotational speed mainly because of the increase of secondary flows in the section. The section's average convective heat transfer coefficient increased with an increase in the rotational speed, and its value at 1000 rpm was approximately twice than that at static conditions. The phenomenon of oscillation was observed near the exit of the horizontal section, and was caused by the flow and considerable property changes near the pseudo critical temperature. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed using the real gas thermal properties and was coupled with the heat transferred owing to fuel flow. The predicted fuel and wall temperatures were in good agreement with the experimental data. A new local Nusselt number correlation of the heat transfer of n-decane in a rotating horizontal section was proposed.