• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.138-152
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• 1996

Many studies of heat transfer on the swirling flow or unswirled flow in a abrupt pipe expansion are widely carried out. The mechanism is not fully found evidently due to the instabilities of flow in a sudden change of the shape and appearance of turbulent shear layers in a recirculation region and secondary vortex near the corner. The purpose of this study is to obtain data through an experimental study of the swirling flow and heat transfer downstream of an abrupt expansion in a circular pipe with uniform heat flux. Experiments were carried out for the turbulent flow nd heat transfer downstream of an abrupt circular pipe expansion. The uniform heat flux condition was imposed to the downstream of the abrupt expansion by using an electrically heated pipe. Experimental data are presented for local heat transfer rates and local axial velocities in the tube downstream of an abrupt 3:1 & 2:1 expansion. Air was used as the working fluid in the upstream tube, the Reynolds number was varied from 60, 00 to 120, 000 and the swirl number range (based on the swirl chamber geometry, i.e. L/d ratio) in which the experiments were conducted were L/d=0, 8 and 16. Axial velocity increased rapidly at r/R=0.35 in the abrupt concentric expansion turbulent flow through the test tube in unswirled flow. It showed that with increasing axial distance the highest axial velocities move toward the tube wall in the case of the swirling flow abrupt expansion. A uniform wall heat flux boundary condition was employed, which resulted in wall-to-bulk temperatures ranging from 24.deg. C to 71.deg. C. In swirling flow, the wall temperature showed a greater increase at L/d=16 than any other L/d. The bulk temperature showed a minimum value at the pipe inlet, it also exhibited a linear increase with axial distance along the pipe. As swirl intensity increased, the location of peak Nu numbers was observed to shift from 4 to 1 step heights downstream of the expansion. This upstream movement of the maximum Nusselt number was accompanied by an increase in its magnitude from 2.2 to 8.8 times larger than fully developed tube flow values.