Fully-developed buoyancy-affected flow and heat transfer in an axially rotating annular channel with longitudinal partitions

Navier-Stokes equations written in the Boussinesq's approximation are solved numerically for simulation of the laminar and turbulent flows of the cooling air through a long gap between two co-rotating cylinders kept at different temperatures. Flow situations with Grashof numbers up to 10⁷, are considered. Data on velocity and temperature fields as well as on local Nusselt number distributions and averaged heat transfer have been obtained for a 60° sector. It has been established that the spanwise size of buoyancy-driven vortices developing in a 60° sector channel changes significantly over the gap in case of laminar flow and remain nearly constant for turbulent flow. For the laminar regime, the cross flow intensity is approximately ten times higher than for turbulent flows at the Reynolds numbers of the order of 10⁴. Some computations have been performed using a simplified single-cell formulation.