USE OF ALGEBRAIC HEAT FLUX MODELS TO IMPROVE HEAT TRANSFER PREDICTIONS FOR SUPERCRITICAL PRESSURE FLUIDS

This work proposes simulations of heat transfer under supercritical pressure conditions showing improvements with respect to previous works. This is obtained by the introduction of the Algebraic Heat Flux Model (AHFM) for evaluating the turbulent heat flux in turbulence production terms, using the in-house code THEMAT and the STAR-CCM+ code. The first code makes use of the AHFM also in the energy balance equations, while for the commercial code simplifying assumptions are considered in the implementations. Custom sets of parameters for every condition of inlet temperature and internal diameter are tuned in some cases, driven by the opinion that a single set of parameters cannot be suitable in every flow conditions, considering the complexity of the variables that concur in the heat transfer deterioration phenomenon. The AHFM model gives promising results with new sets of parameters in order to model the deterioration and the recovery phases because of its term related to the variance of temperature.