PREDICTION OF THERMAL STRATIFICATION IN A CURVED DUCT WITH 3D BODY-FITTED COORDINATES

This paper concerns a numerical prediction method for buoyancy-influenced flows using three-dimensional non-orthogonal curvilinear co-ordinates. The numerical analysis of the transformed governing equations for thermal hydraulics is based on a Lagrangian method, in which advected physical values are evaluated by local cubic spline interpolations with third-order accuracy in the three-dimensional computational domain. In addition, the buoyancy and diffusion terms are discretized in the Lagrangian scheme so as to have second-order accuracy with respect to time and space. The Neumann boundary conditions, which have been rather difficult for non-orthogonal co-ordinates to deal with, can be implemented by making use of normal vectors on the physical boundary surfaces and cubic spline interpolations. The developed numerical method is applied to the steady isothermal flow in a curved pipe and the unsteady stratified flow in a curved duct. Both of the predicted values are in good agreement with the experimental results and the validity of the prediction method is confirmed.