TITLE:
Design and Enhancement of Thermal Flow Characteristic in an Annular Diffuser under Turbulent Flow
AUTHORS:
Ehan Sabah Shukri Askari
KEYWORDS:
CFD, Turbulent Flow, Temperature Field, Annular Diffuser, Semi-Dimples
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Power and Energy Engineering,
Vol.7 No.9,
September
23,
2019
ABSTRACT: The annular diffuser is an expansion area, which, despite its simple structure, is very important in some engineering and thermal applications. In the present research, numerical simulations were performed to investigate the temperature field and flow structure characteristics in an annular diffuser. The hub of the annular diffuser consisted of a straight semi-dimpled tube SSDT. Three different diffuser wall angles (α) 1.8°, 3.6° and 5.4° with inlet Reynolds number 1.5 × 104were studied in details with air as a working fluid. The computational fluid dynamics CFD was used to simulate the model in a turbulent flow. The standard k-ε turbulence model was used to complete the governing equations. The numerical results, mainly the temperature distribution, pressure drop and velocity distribution for the airflow in the annular diffuser fitted with SSDT for different diffuser wall angles α were obtained and compared. It was observed that as the wall diffuser angle α increases, the enhancement of the temperature distribution and the velocity distribution decrease while the pressure drop rate increases. The maximum temperature distribution and velocity distribution were completed by diffuser wall angle α1 = 1.8° whereas, the highest pressure drop achieved by diffuser wall angle α3 = 5.4°.