Prediction of Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer in Swirling, Turbulent Boundary Layers

Abstract

The paper presents the outcome of finite-difference calculations of turbulent flow near spinning cones, disks, and cylinders. The turbulence model used is a version of the mixing-length hypothesis in which the mixing length which would prevail in the absence of swirl is made a linear function of the local “swirling flow” Richardson number. Agreement with available experimental data for these geometries is generally good. At high swirl rates, however, a few systematic differences between experiment and calculation become evident which are probably attributable to the nonisotropic nature of the effective viscosity in such complex strain fields.