Assessment of turbulence models for heat transfer in axi-symmetric pipe flow

Abstract

In the present study, a numerical approach using finite element method has been carried out to investigate fully developed turbulent flow and heat transfer in a smooth two-dimensional axi-symmetric pipe. Four different turbulence models, namely Shear Stress Transport (SST), Spalart-Allmaras, Length VELocity (L-VEL) and Algebraic yPlus are selected along with Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and thermal energy equations for numerical simulation. Parametric simulation has been carried out at a fixed Karman number, Reτ = 180 with different Prandtl numbers Pr = 0.71, 2 and 5. The numerical results obtained from different turbulence models are then compared with the available direct numerical simulation (DNS) data in terms of both inner and outer scaling. From the comparative study, it is found that SST model has good agreement with DNS results and can be used to predict turbulent pipe flow and heat transfer for higher Reynolds and Prandtl numbers.