Achieving heat transfer enhancement via manipulation of bulk flow structures in turbulent thermal convection

Lu Zhang and Ke-Qing Xia
Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 023501 – Published 3 February 2023

Abstract

We report an experimental study on the enhancement of heat transfer efficiency in turbulent thermal convection via manipulation of the bulk flow, which is achieved by inserting artificial structures into the convection domain. These structures are designed to alter the bulk flow without perturbing the boundary layer. Two types of convective domains are designed and fabricated. The Type-I domain has an extruded square grid structure in the bulk and the Type-II domain can be viewed as a modification to the first one that devides the domain into parallel connected dual-channel structures. The working fluid is water at a Prandtl number of Pr = 4.3 and the Rayleigh number covers a range of 6.4×107Ra8.5×109. It is found that structuring the bulk flow can enhance the Nusselt number by a factor of up to 14% for the Type-I domain and by 30% for the Type-II domain, respectively. Local temperature and velocity field measurements reveal that the enhancement in Nusselt number results from both an increase in plume coherency and an enhanced flow strength. The later feature is in sharp contrast with the significantly reduced flow strength found in geometrical-confinement-induced heat transfer enhancement reported in previous studies. Our results thus shed new light on flow manipulation and inspire future research on the optimization of thermal control.

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  • Received 11 November 2022
  • Accepted 23 December 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.023501

©2023 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Lu Zhang* and Ke-Qing Xia

  • Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research and Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China and Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China

  • *zhangl39@sustech.edu.cn
  • xiakq@sustech.edu.cn

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Vol. 8, Iss. 2 — February 2023

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