Turbulent heat-and-mass transfer in channel flow at transcritical temperature conditions

Turbulent heat and mass transfer at transcritical thermodynamic conditions is studied in turbulent channel flow using the high-fidelity DNS for solution to the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the conservative form closed with the Peng-Robinson state equation. To isolate the real fluid effects on turbulent heat transfer, the bulk pressure is maintained at supercritical $p_b = 1.1 p_c$ and the isothermal walls are set to $\Delta T/2$ above and below the local pseudo-boiling temperature $T_{pb}$ of the fluid (R-134a) where $\Delta T$ is 5K, 10K, and 20K. This setup allows the flow to reach a statistically-steady state while capturing the highest thermodynamic gradients, thus allowing a detailed study on thermodynamics of transcritical turbulent heat transfer. All thermodynamic and turbulent scales are fully resolved which is shown through a careful grid convergence analysis. The time-averaged density and compressibility factor are highly dependent on the temperature field and their large near-wall gradient causes thermodynamically-induced peaks in the RMS quantities resulting in strong turbulent mixing. The ejection of heavy pseudo-liquid blobs by near-wall turbulent structures into the channel core leads to a third RMS peak which is not observable in ideal gas simulations.