Modeling the Turbulent Heat Fluxes in Low Prandtl Number Shear Flows

Abstract

Liquid metals are often considered for an effective convective heat transport in several technical applications. Since the geometric setup is in most cases quite complex, and additionally the Reynolds numbers are large, numerical simulations frequently use a Reynolds-averaged Navier- Stokes equations (RANS) approach. Hereby, the turbulent heat fluxes are applied inadequately by a constant turbulent Prandtl number . In this context, different advanced models are compared and analyzed with experimental and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data, which are conceived as validated. The different simulations show an improvement of the thermal field, but also depict the influence of the eddy viscosity model for forced and mixed convective flow.