Thermo-fluid-dynamic analysis of the flow in a rotating channel with a sharp 'U' turn.

Infrared thermography has been employed to carry out a detailed convective heat transfer measurements at Re = 20,000 in a two-pass square channel both for the static case (absence of channel rotation) and for the rotating case ( Ro = 0.3). At the same time, the main and secondary flow fields have been measured by means of particle image velocimetry with the aim to investigate how the flow behavior affects the local distributions of the convective heat transfer coefficient for the two cases. The normal-to-wall velocity component ( w) and the turbulent kinetic energy, both measured close to the heat exchanging wall, have been used to formulate an empirical heat transfer correlation within an attempt to identify the role performed by these two quantities on the convective heat transfer coefficient distributions. The latter ones have been reported in terms of normalized Nusselt number ( Nu/Nu*) maps, where Nu* is the Nusselt number evaluated with the classical Dittus-Bölter correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]