• Fluid Mechanics and Flight Mechanics •

Study of Heat Transfer of Cryogenic Methane Under Supercritical Pressure with Consideration of Thermal Conduction in Engine Cooling Channel Walls

CHEN Zunjing, WANG Leilei, MENG Hua

1. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
• Received:2012-01-21 Revised:2012-02-26 Online:2013-01-25 Published:2013-01-19
• Supported by:

Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (R1100300)

Abstract:

Numerical simulation study is conducted of the heat transfer of cryogenic methane flowing inside a rectangular engine cooling channel under supercritical pressure with consideration of the coupled thermal conduction in the solid channel region. The effects of wall heat fluxes and cooling channel geometries on the fluid flow and heat transfer processes under supercritical pressure are carefully examined. Variations of the fluid velocity, channel wall temperature, wall heat flux, and Nusselt number are obtained and discussed. Results indicate that with consideration of the conjugate heat transfer in both the solid and fluid regions, a fraction of the heat flux imposed on the top channel surface is transferred into the cryogenic methane through the side walls. As the imposed wall heat flux increases, more heat can be thermally conducted into the side channel walls. Decreasing the cooling channel height/width aspect ratio leads to enhanced heat transfer, but the pressure loss also increases significantly. Therefore, the combined effects of the channel aspect ratio on both heat transfer and pressure loss has to be taken into consideration to obtain an optimum cooling channel design. The thermal performance parameter can be used as a reference in this regard. The modified Jackson & Hall coefficient is applicable to heat transfer prediction under supercritical pressure with acceptable accuracy under all tested conditions in this paper.

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