Sensitization of the modified SST model to the swirling and curvature for turbulent impinging jet heat transfer

Abstract Accurate prediction for effect of swirl/curvature for turbulent impinging jet heat transfer is a challenging task for varied turbulence models. In the present work, a modified shear stress transport (SST) model using the cross-diffusion term (SSTCD), the SST model with the curvature correction (SSTCC) and the SST model are evaluated for a wide range of conditions. These cases include the three-dimensional swirling pipe flow with Reynolds number Re=2.8e5, three-dimensional swirling impinging jets with Re=35,000 for different swirl numbers and nozzle-plate spacing of 2 and 6, and jet impingement over convex surfaces with Re=23,000. The numerical results are compared with the available experimental data and the latest numerical results in terms of heat transfer and flow fields. It is found that the effect of swirl/streamline curvature using the SSTCC model tends to be enhanced falsely compared with the experiment for jet impingement. Meanwhile, the effect of curvature correction can be ignored downstream, leading to a similar performance of the SSTCC model and the SST model. By contrary, the SSTCD model significantly improves the SST model for predicting heat transfer at least for the flows demonstrated in this paper.