NUMERICAL STUDY OF TURBULENT FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN A CONVEX CHANNEL OF A CALORIMETRIC ROCKET CHAMBER

A numerical study on flow and heat transfer in double-wave cross-corrugated passages with different structure parameters was conducted. The three-dimensional governing equations for mass, momentum, and heat transfer were solved using a control volume finite difference method and a validated low-Reynolds number k-? model. The effects of Reynolds number and structure parameters, including pitch ratio (P₁/P₂) and height ratio (H₁/H₂), were studied. It was found that with a decrease in height ratio, the mainstream flow changed from a pattern dominated by L-shaped flow to one dominated by Z-shaped flow, whereas pitch ratio had almost no influence on the flow pattern. The average Nusselt number Nu_av first increased and then decreased gradually with either an increase in the pitch ratio or a decrease in the height ratio. Pressure drop showed the same trend as heat transfer performance. The best performance evaluation criterion number (g) of double-wave passage was nearly 20% higher than that of the corresponding single-wave passage, whereas the worst was nearly 40% lower. On the whole, the double-wave plate with H₁/H₂ = 5 showed better overall performance. The double-wave plate with P₁/P₂ = 1 had better overall performance for Re < 5,000, whereas that with P₁/P₂ = 3 was better for Re > 7,500.