Heat Transfer Enhancements in Rotating Two-Pass Coolant Channels With Profiled Ribs: Part 2—Detailed Measurements

Abstract

Detailed heat/mass transfer distributions are presented inside a two-pass rotating ribbed coolant channel for two profiled-rib configurations. Several profiled-rib configurations have been studied (Acharya et al., 2000), and it was found that the best performance was achieved by saw-tooth ribs, and a pyramid–valley rib combination. The profiled ribs were placed directly opposite to each other on the leading and trailing surfaces. Smooth side walls were used in all the experiments. Heat transfer measurements were compared with straight ribs of equal blockage ratio. The measurements were made in a two-pass rotating facility using the naphthalene sublimation mass transfer technique, which provides highly resolved surface distributions. The results presented are for a Reynolds number of 30,000, two rotation numbers (0 and 0.3), and include average heat/mass transfer over the entire inter-rib module as well as detailed heat/mass transfer contours for two profiled-rib cases. Significant enhancement of up to 25 percent in heat/mass transfer was obtained with the pyramid–valley and saw-tooth shaped ribs under rotating conditions.