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Effect of rotational speed on conjugate heat transfer from an uniformly heated

rotating axisymmetric disk

Conference Paper · November 2014

DOI: 10.1109/ICSEMR.2014.7043563

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 IEEE-32331
Effect of Rotational Speed on Conjugate Heat
Transfer from an Uniformly Heated Rotating
Axisymmetric Disk
Dr. S. Senthil Kumar* and S. Karthikeyan
Department of Aeronautical Engineering
School of Mechanical Engineering
Vel Tech Dr. RR & Dr. SR Technical University
Chennai, India
*
ssenthil@veltechuniv.edu.in
Abstract —Numerical simulation of conjugate heat
transferfrom a heated rotating axisymmetric disk is presented.
The axisymmetric two-dimensional analyses have been carried
2 2 2
for different heat fluxes (200 W/m , 400 W/m and 600 W/m )
and rotational speeds (50 rad/s, 100 rad/s and 200 rad/s) to
understand the effect of rotational speed on heat transfer. Fluid
flow and heat transfer governing equations are solved using
commercial CFD code, ANSYS FLUENT. The conjugate heat
transfer modeling is used to solve the coupled heat transfer
between fluid and solid regions. Results revealed that the
temperature decreases along the radius of the disk and reaching
a maximum value at the centre of the disk when a constant heat
flux is applied. The drop in temperature along the disk increases
as the rotational speed increases which could be attributed by the
fact that the convective heat transfer coefficient increases with
the rotational speed.
Keywords—conjugate heat transfer; rotating disk; rotational
speed; heat flux
I. INTRODUCTION
Rotating-discs are being unavoidable systems, in the
current technological applications like turbo-machinery,
computer disc drives, rotating dust separators, CVD reactors,
train wheel or disc brake design etc. Literature review revealed
that the convective heat transfer from rotating discs have been
studied extensively using numerical and experimental
techniques. [1-16].
Arani et al. [1] investigated the convective heat transfer
from a heated rotating disk at arbitrary inclination angle in
laminar flow with different rotational Re numbers vary from 1
5 due to the rotation are negligible and also they identified four
up to 2×10 presented numerical as well as experimental the
results that the buoyancy force dominates the natural
convection in the rotational Re number range of 2500-5000 at
different inclination angle. Forced convection started to be
dominant in the Re number range of 5000 to 10000 and
combined forced and natural convection exists in this range. As
the increase in the angle of inclination of the disk, the average
surface Nu number increases for the wide range of rotational
Veltech Multitech Dr.Rangarajan Dr.Sakunthala
Engineering College, Avadi, Chennai (Sponsors)
International Conference on Science, Engineering and Management Research (ICSEMR 2014)
978-1-4799-7613-3/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Dr. Edison Chandra Seelan
Department of Mechanical Engineering
SreeSastha Institute of Engineering and Technology
Chennai, India
Re number. Varun Sharma et al. [2] numerically
investigated the heat transfer from a rotating circular cylinder
in the steady regime and presented results for the different
rotational speeds ( 0-5 rad/s) in the Re number range of 1-35
and Prandtl number ranging from 0.7 to 100. From the
numerical study it wasclearly evident that as the rotational
speed increases the local Nu number decreased. And also the
value of the local Nu number increased with increasing Re
number for a particular rotational speed.
Arun et al. [3] investigated fluid flow simulations within
rotating annulus and presented the effect of variation of
rotational Re number (2400” Re ” 45,000 and axial Re number
(3000” Re ”45,000) on heat transfer and fluid flow. It was
evident that when the rotational Reynolds number increases
from 4000 to 18000, the magnitude of axial velocity decreased,
the wall temperature decreased and also the hydrodynamic
boundary layer increased from the inner wall to fluid. As axial
Re number increased more heat was transferred from inner
rotating wall to the fluid which was flowing through annulus.
As rotational Re number increased, Nu number also increased
for low axial Reynolds number and at high axial Re number the
effect diminished.
Julien et al. [4, 5] experimentally studied the heat transfers
over the rotor surface of a rotor–stator system with an open end
air- gap for rotational Re numbers ranging from 1.29 X105 to
6.45 X105 for the dimensionless spacing between the two disks
G, ranging from 0.01 to 0.16 and found that the increase in
rotational Re number and spacing G hardly increasing the
average Nu number over the rotor. But at low rotational Re <
5.16 X 105 Nu numbers are very low and do not vary a lot with
Re. Viscosity effects are preponderant and the inertial effects
Regimes corresponds to merged laminar boundary layer is
encountered for low rotational speed Re and low spacing G,
disjoined laminar boundary layers because of a higher
dimensionless spacing G, merged turbulent boundary layers for
 IEEE-32331
a low G and a high Re disjoined turbulent boundary layers,
due to a high rotational speed and a high spacing between both
disks.
Alshara [6] investigated the effect of rotating two rows of
horizontal cylinders on forced convection heat transfer in cross
flow with considering the various parametric study by
changing the Re number (Re=10-40) when the Prandtl number,
Pr=0.7, the dimensionless angular velocity (ȍ=0-3) (for both
directions clockwise CW and counter clockwise CCW). Their
results showed that the average Nu number increased with
increasing Re, and decreased with ȍ.
Ewa et al. [7] analyzed the flow with heat transfer in
rotating cavity using LES and DNS and considered the two
rotating cylinder, the upper one rotating with high speed when
compared with the lower cylinder both in same direction or in
opposite direction. They also carried out different parametric
study with the aspect ratio L = (R1 í R0) / 2h where h is half of
the distance between disks ranges between L = 3-9, the
curvature parameter Rm = (R1 + R0) /(R1 í R0 ) ranges from Rm
= 1.5-5.0, the Prandtl number Pr = 0.71 and the Re number
(up to 300 000). In the counter-rotating configuration the
centrifugal flow induced by the faster rotating disk (upper
one) recirculates along the slower rotating disk towards the
inner cylinder. This inward recirculation flow meets the
outward radial flow, induced by the slower rotating disk; the
radial component of the velocity vanishes. Ewa et al. [7] found
that when both disks rotate in the same direction with the
same angular speed (s = 1). The dimensionless temperature of
both disks and of the outer cylinder equals one Ĭ = 1.
Temperature of the inner cylinder equals Ĭ = 0.It shows the
effectiveness of radial cooling: the area dominated by the
coming cold fluid is laminar.
Numerical as well as analytical investigations of a rotating
disc of finite thickness were studied by Indinger et al. [8]
considering a transient laminar conjugate heat transfer in a
rotating disc. Their results showed that the heat transfer
coefficient quickly becomes time independent and reaches to
steady-state conditions. Shevchuk [9] found a self-similar
solution of the transient laminar convective heat transfer and
confirmed the findings from their preview work [8] that the
heat transfer coefficient rapidly becomes time-independent
and equal to its value at steady-state conditions.
YapÕcÕ et al. [10] provided numerical solutions of
conjugate heat transfer in laminar, fully developed flow
through an externally heated pipe under high temperature
conditions. The results served to determine the temperature
distributions and the thermally induced stresses in similar pipe
flow applications. In our investigation heat is applied to the
rotating disc directly.
In spite of a considerable amount of studies dedicated to
address this problem, majority of the investigations considered
enclosed rotating discs or free rotating discs with or without
an outer forced flow perpendicular to the disc plane. The
objective of the current numerical study is to analyze the
conjugate transfer from a rotating disk with different rotational
speeds (Ȧ=50 rad/s, 100 rad/s, and 200 rad/s) and heat fluxes
(q=200 W/m2, 400 W/m2, and 600 W/m2) and to see the effect
of rotational speed on the convective heat transfer.
II. NUMERICAL METHODOLOGY
A. Problem Definition and Geometry Specification
The computational domain and boundary conditions are
shown in Fig. 1. The computational domain is approximated
as a 2D axisymmetric geometry since it is assumed that
supplied heat flux at the bottom of the solid wall is uniform
and negligible heat transfer in the azimuthal direction. The
length of the rectangle is taken as 0.3 m and the breath is 0.2
m for the fluid region and 0.01 m (thickness) for the solid
region. The axisymmetric disk is allowed to rotate at a
constant rotational speed (Ȧ) and air is entering the fluidregion
through the top wall of the fluid domain at a constant velocity
of 5m/s. Rectangular non-uniform grid of 21000 cells is used
for the computations.
Fig. 1 Computational domain and boundary conditions
B. Solver settings and boundry conditions
Commercially available CFD code, ANSYS Fluent
TM
is
used for the flow and heat transfer calculations. The flow
behaviour and heat transfer characteristics over the rotating
disk with heat flux can be modelled using the governing
equations including the two-dimensional continuity, Navier-
Stokes, and energy equations. The governing equations are
solved under incompressible pressure based SIMPLEC
method and standard RNG k–İ two equations model is
adopted for turbulence modelling. The RNG k –İ model is one
of the most common turbulence models used for this kind of
problems. The convective flux is discretized by a second order
upwind scheme. All the numerical tests are performed with
-5
convergence threshold residuals equal to 10 .To solve the
problem, velocity inlet, wall, pressure outlet, axis boundary
conditions imposed on inlet, solid walls, outlet, axis
respectively as shown in Fig. 1. The conjugate heat transfer
(CHT) methodology is used to perform the heat transfer
calculations both in the solid and fluid regions simultaneously.
The CHT analysis allows a simultaneous and coupled solution
of aerodynamics and heat transfer in the external cold gas and
the internal heated solid region and also conduction within the
solid metal, hence eliminating the need for multiple and
decoupled solutions. Material properties are listed in Table I.
For the disk solid region, steel is used as material and air is
used as fluid under atmospheric conditions.
 IEEE-32331

TABLE I. THERMO-PHYSICAL PROPERTY VALUES OF SOLID AND K for the applied heat fluxes of 200, 400 and 600
FLUID REGIONS W/m2respectively. The same trend is observed for other values
S.No Parameters Constant of Ȧ as well, as shown in Figs. 8 and 9, but with a lower
temperature value at the same location due to the fact that an
Fluid(air) property increased Ȧ value reduces the temperature considerably for a
3 fixed q value.
1 Density 1.225 kg/m
2 Specific heat 1006.43J/kg-k B. Effect of rotational speed (Ȧ) on heat transfer
capacity
3 Thermal The changes in temperature along the top wall of the
0.0242W/m-k
conductivity heated disk at different rotational speeds (say Ȧ= 50, 100 and
4 1.7894e-05 kg/m-
Viscosity 200 rad/s) are shown in Figs. 10 and 11 for the heat fluxes, q =
s
400 and 600 W/m2 respectively. From Fig. 10, it is clearly
Solid(steel) property seenthat drop in temperature increases along the radius of
1 Density 8030 kg/m
3 surface as the Ȧ increases for a fixed value of heat flux. This
trend is more or less monotonic for all the values of q, as it is
2 Specific heat 502.48 J/kg-k evident from Fig. 11. As already mentioned that the
capacity temperature decreases along the radius gradually to the low
3 Thermal value which implies more rotational speed gives more heat
16.27 W/m-k transfer coefficient (see Fig. 7) and less temperature at the
conductivity
outer edge of the disk.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Numerical simulations of conjugate heat transfer over a heated

rotating disk have been performed for three different heat
fluxes and rotational speeds to understand the effect of
rotational speed and heat flux on the convective heat transfer
behaviour. The temperature and heat transfer coefficient at the
top wall surface of the heated disk are plotted, as shown Figs.
6-10. Figs. 2-4 show the contours of temperature for three
different heat fluxes, q = 200, 400 and 600 W/m2 when the
rotational speed is 50 rad/s. It can be observed that the
temperature at all the spacial locations along the radius of the
disk increases as the heat flux increases. The variations in
temperature are clearly seen in all these three figures showing
a maximum value at the centre of the heated disk and a
minimum at the outer edge of it with a monotonic gradual
decrement along the radius of the disk. This is due to the fact
that centrifugal momentum is more at the outer edge of the 2
Fig. 2 Contours of temperature when q= 200 W/m and Ȧ
disk, as can be seen in Fig. 5. The qualitative predictions are =50 rad/s
consistent with the earlier findings in the literature [1-3].
A. Effect of heat flux on temperature

The variations of temperature along the top wall of the

heated disk for different heat fluxes (say, q = 200, 400 and 600
W/m2) are shown in Figs. 6, 8 and 9 for the rotational speeds,
Ȧ= 50, 100 and 200 rad/s, respectively. From the analysis, it is
found that for a fixed value of Ȧ, the surface heat transfer
coefficient (Fig. 7) increases gradually towards the outer end
of the disk which keeps the low surface temperature at the
point whereas the maximum temperature is seen around the
centre of the disk, as shown in Figs. 6, 8 and 9. The surface
heat transfer coefficient for high heat flux is higher than that
of low heat flux applied (Fig. 7). The temperature increases
along the top wall surface of the disk as the heat flux increases Fig. 3 Contours of temperature when q= 400 W/m2 and
for a fixed value of Ȧ . For example, when Ȧ = 50 rad/s, the Ȧ= 50 rad/s
maximum temperature reached to 312.5 K, 308.5 K and 304.5
 IEEE-32331

Fig. 6 Variations of the wall temperature at Ȧ=50 rad/s

Fig. 4 Contours of2 temperature

when q=600 W/m and Ȧ=50 rad/s

Fig.7 Variations of surface heat transfer co-efficient at

Ȧ=50 rad/s

Fig. 5 Velocity vector

when q = 400 W/m2 and Ȧ = 50 rad/s
Fig. 8 Variations of the wall temperature at Ȧ=100 rad/s
 IEEE-32331

Fig.9 Variations of the wall temperature at Ȧ= 200 rad/s 2

Fig. 11 Variations of the wall temperature for the heat flux (q) = 600W/m

[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
Fig. 10 Variations of the wall temperature for the heat
2 [7]
flux (q) = = 400W/m
IV. CONCLUSION [8]
In this investigation, numerical modeling of conjugate heat
[9]
transfer from a rotating disk has been carried out with an
axisymmetric approximation under various rotational speed and [10]
heat fluxes. It is found that with respect to the heat flux given to
the disk, an appropriate rotational speed must be chosen to have [11]
the same amount convective heat transfer. If rotational speed is
high for a fixed value of heat flux, heat transfer is also high
yielding more temperature reduction along the heated surface.
From the analysis, it is observed that the rotational speed of the [12]
rotating disk keeps the disc cooler from over-heating. It is seen
that as the rotational speed is increased, the convective heat
[13]
transfer coefficient is more.This indicates more heat is
transferred to the fluid around the disk than within the
[14]
disk.When less heat is applied with high rotational speed, fluid
[15]
is cooled easily. It shows that rotational speed of a disc plays a
key role in its cooling effect. The future enhancement of the [16]
investigation would be extended by (a) adding liquid jet
impingement over a rotating disc; changing the material to
aluminium, copper, nickel etc.; Studying with non-uniform [17]
heating of the disc. To get more insight into the physics and
understand the 3D effects, the computational analysis can be
extended to 3D analysis of the same problem. [18]
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