Direct numerical simulation of heated CO2 flows at supercritical pressure in a vertical annulus at Re=8900

The present study is concerned with thermal physics of the fluid at supercritical pressure (SCP) where many singular phenomena are observed in turbulent heat transfer due to severe property variations of the fluid. Direct numerical simulation is conducted for upward annular flows of CO2 at a pressure of 8MPa with a constant-heat-flux boundary condition imposed on the inner wall. All simulations are made at the inlet bulk Reynolds number of 8900 with particular attention being paid to the structure of the heated boundary layers at SCP. It is shown that most singular phenomena at SCP occur when the pseudocritical temperature arises between the heated wall and bulk fluid temperatures. The mean velocity profile near the heated wall shows no logarithmic distribution in the inertial subrange because a large reduction in the Reynolds shear stress occurs in the viscous region. The computational flow visualization reveals that alternating low- and high-speed streaks in the viscous region are not clearly observed when the wall temperature peak is realized due to significant heat transfer deterioration. These results strongly suggest that the ejection and sweep motions of the fluid in the viscous region become so weakened that turbulent boundary layers at SCP cannot be self-sustained in the presence of strong stabilizing effects of the variable-property and buoyancy. It is also shown that streaky thermal pattern remains no longer similar to that of the velocity boundary layer when these coherent motions are reduced in the viscous region. In the meanwhile, the predicted normalized temperature profile at SCP shows a nearly flat distribution outside the viscous region although substantial amount of the radial turbulent heat flux is predicted there. This singular phenomenon at SCP can be considered as comparable to a phase change phenomenon at subcritical pressure, where the internal energy of the fluid is increased without changing the fluid temperature. At SCP, this transition occurs continuously across the pseudocritical point but the computational flow visualization shows very vigorous density fluctuations when it occurs.