Effect of Channel Orientation of Local Heat (Mass) Transfer Distributions in a Rotating Two-Pass Square Channel With Smooth Walls

Abstract

Naphthalene sublimation experiments have been conducted to study the effects of channel orientation, rotational Coriolis force, and a sharp turn, on the local heat (mass) transfer distributions in a two-pass square channel with a sharp turn and smooth walls, rotating about a perpendicular axis. The test channel was oriented so that the direction of rotation was perpendicular to or at a 45 deg angle to the leading and trailing walls. The Reynolds number was kept at 5,500 and the rotation number ranged up to 0.24. For the radial outward flow in the first straight pass of the diagonally oriented channel, rotation-induced Coriolis force caused large monotonic spanwise variations of the local mass transfer on both the leading and trailing walls, with the largest mass transfer along the outer edges of both walls. Rotation did not lower the spanwise average mass transfer on the leading wall and did not increase that on the trailing wall in the diagonally oriented channel as much as in the normally oriented channel. The combined effect of the channel orientation, rotation, and the sharp turn caused large variations of the local mass transfer distributions on the walls at the sharp turn and immediately downstream of the sharp turn. The velocity fields that were obtained with a finite difference control-volume-based computer program helped explain how rotation and channel orientation affected the local mass transfer distributions in the rotating two-pass channel.