Flow and heat/mass transfer over rough surfaces

Turbulent heat and mass transfer play a key role in industrial applications, energy production, and climate and environmental processes.

Examples are heat transfer in heat exchangers and gas turbines, mass transfer in chemical reactors and separators, moisture and pollution transport in the atmosphere, and nutrient and heat transport in oceans.

Often the heat and mass transfer occurs over rough surfaces in flows subject to buoyancy or rotation/streamline curvature effects.

In this project, surface roughness effects on turbulent flows with heat and mass transfer are studied in cases with buoyancy and rotation/streamline curvature effects by direct numerical simulations. The turbulent flow, heat/mass transfer and surface roughness are fully resolved in the simulations. Also engineering correlations are derived and data are produced for modelling purposes.

In the first two and half years, flows with buoyancy are studied and then flows with heat/mass transfer and rotation/streamline curvature effects over rough walls.The project enhances our understanding of surface roughness effects on flows and heat and mass transfer, which is yet limited.

The enhanced understanding and generated detailed data enable us to develop improved models for turbulent flows with heat/mass transfer over rough surfaces.

This will ultimately contribute to the development of more efficient and sustainable energy and industrial processes, and better understanding of environmental and climate processes.