Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572

DOI 10.1007/s00231-013-1250-8

ORIGINAL

Numerical study on heat transfer and resistance characteristics

of supercritical water inside internally-ribbed tube
Zhenxing Zhao • Xiangyu Wang • Defu Che

Received: 26 August 2012 / Accepted: 17 October 2013 / Published online: 6 November 2013
Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Abstract The effects of structural parameters for inter-

Greek letters
nally-ribbed tube on heat transfer and flow characteristics
a Spiral rising angle (°)
of supercritical water were studied numerically. The results
b Volume expansion coefficient (1/K)
show that the heat transfer and pressure loss increases with
e Turbulent energy dissipation
the increase of mass flow or heat flux. The Heat transfer
k Thermal conductivity (W/m K)
and resistance coefficients of supercritical water increase
l Dynamic viscosity (Pa s)
with the spiral rising angle decrease or rib height increase,
sw Shear stress at the wall (N/m2)
while rib width has a weak influence on heat transfer and
q Density of fluid (kg/m3)
pressure drop.
Subscripts
List of symbols 0 Inlet conditions
b Rib width (mm) max Maximum
cp Specific heat transfer (J/kg K) min Minimum
d Tube diameter (m) out Outside
G Mass flux (kg/m2s) w Wall condition
g Acceleration of gravity (m/s2)
H Rib height (mm)
hb Bulk enthalpy (kJ/kg) 1 Introduction
k Turbulent kinetic energy (m2/s2)
N Head number In supercritical boilers, vertical water-wall has found wider
Nu Nusselt number application than spirally coiled water wall. Since inter-
Pr Prandtl number nally-ribbed tube has simple structure and can be easily
q Wall heat flux (W/m2) manufactured and installed, vertical internally-ribbed tubes
Re Reynolds number are commonly used in water wall of boiler, as well as in
S Thread pitch (mm) heat exchanger in nuclear reactor and other heat transfer
T Temperature (K) equipment. However, the working fluid in the supercritical
x Axial distance (m) vertical internally-ribbed tube water-wall boiler signifi-
y? Non-dimension distance from tube wall cantly differs from that in the subcritical boiler in both heat
transfer and resistance characteristics [1–3]. So it has
become necessary to study the heat transfer and resistance
characteristics of the supercritical water in internally-rib-
Z. Zhao  X. Wang  D. Che (&) bed tube.
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, In 1958, Dickinson and Weich [4] studied the heat
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong
University, Xi’an 710049, China transfer characteristics of supercritical water and found the
e-mail: dfche@mail.xjtu.edu.cn heat transfer promotion phenomenon. Since then, the

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research on supercritical water continued. Goldman [5]
proposed the pseudo-boiling heat transfer mechanism and
confirmed that the heat transfer deterioration (HTD) phe-
nomenon may occur around the pseudo-critical tempera-
ture. Shitsman [6–8] found that there would appear no
HTD phenomenon at quite large mass flow rates. By
comparing the surface heat transfer coefficient of super-
critical water in horizontal tube and that in vertical tube,
Virkrev et al. [9] revealed that the influence of heat flux on
surface heat transfer coefficient is very weak when the
temperature is far away from the pseudo-critical tempera-
ture. Yamagata and Nishikawa [10] systematically studied
the influence of operating parameters on the heat transfer
characteristic of supercritical water in horizontal and ver-
tical tubes. They found that the maximum surface heat
transfer coefficient occurred at the temperature that is a
little lower than the pseudo-critical temperature, and the
temperature difference between the internal wall tempera-
ture and the bulk flow temperature significantly increased
with increased heat flux when the bulk fluid temperature is
above the pseudo-critical temperature. Stewart et al. [11]
carried out experiments on the influence of the pressure
fluctuation on the supercritical water heat transfer charac-
teristics, and revealed that the maximum wall temperature
appeared where the pressure varied most severely while the
maximum surface heat transfer coefficient occurred in the
steady pressure zone.
Over the past few years, there is a good deal of exper-
imental evidences for both local enhancement and local
deterioration in turbulent mixed convective heat transfer of
supercritical fluids [12–20]. The majority of these experi-
ments on supercritical water or CO2 flowing in uniformly
heated vertical tubes can provide the data for wall tem-
perature and heat transfer coefficient. Results from these
early experiments showed that turbulent heat transfer of
supercritical fluid is very complicated, especially for
upward flow. Kurganov and Kaptilnyi [21] provided
experimental data on flow structure, heat transfer coeffi-
cient and hydraulic drag of supercritical pressure CO2
heated in a vertical tube flowing upward and downward at
very high Reynolds numbers. They also found that the
development of the M-shaped velocity profile in upward
flows favors the enhancement of heat transfer.
Numerical studies on supercritical water have also been
widely carried out in recent years. Koshizuka et al. [22]
carried out two-dimensional numerical study on supercrit-
ical water heat transfer characteristics in a plain tube
adopting the standard j-e model, and the simulation results
agree quite well with experimental data. Lei [23] studied
the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical water in the
inclined tube using RNG j-e model, revealing that there
may appear secondary flow due to the significant density
variation of supercritical water in the large specific heat
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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
region. Cheng et al. [24] investigated the heat transfer of
supercritical water in various flow channels using CFX-5.6
and found that the grid structure has no effect on heat
transfer for the j-e type models, as long as the dimen-
sionless distance y? of the first mesh to the wall is smaller
than 40.
For flow characteristics of supercritical water in the
internally-ribbed tube, both experimental and numerical
studies are insufficient due to the complex flow field inside
the tube and the various geometric parameters of inter-
nally-ribbed tubes. Ackerman [25] revealed that the resis-
tance coefficient in the internally-ribbed tube was 25 %
higher than that in the plain tube. However, the experi-
mental results of Kolher et al. [26] found that the resistance
coefficient in the internally-ribbed tube was two times that
of the similar plain tube. Chen [27] carried out experi-
mental study on the supercritical water heat transfer char-
acteristics in plain and internally-ribbed tubes, proposing
the empirical formulas for calculating the surface heat
transfer coefficient and pressure drop of special internally-
ribbed tubes.
From the literature, it can be found that numerous
investigations have been carried out on the supercritical
water heat transfer and resistance characteristics. Never-
theless, there are two obvious deficiencies: firstly, there are
much more studies on plain tube than internally-ribbed
tube, and the studies are mainly on heat transfer charac-
teristics of supercritical water, less studies have been
completed on resistance characteristics; secondly, all the
previous studies ignore the influence of geometric param-
eters of internally-ribbed tube on heat transfer and resis-
tance characteristics. In addition, in order to make more
perfect research on heat transfer and resistance character-
istics of supercritical water in the internally-ribbed tube,
the effect of geometry should be fully investigated. Fig-
ure 1 illustrates the geometrical configuration and key
parameters of the internally-ribbed tube. This paper is
aimed at clarifying the effect of geometric parameter on the
heat transfer and resistance characteristics of internally-
ribbed tube by numerical study so as to provide a basis for
the optimization design of the internally-ribbed tube
employed in large capacity utility boilers.
2 Model and method
2.1 Governing equations and turbulence models
After supercritical water enters the internally-ribbed tube,
turbulent flow and heat transfer develop simultaneously in
the tube. The flow in a vertical internally-ribbed tube is
assumed to be steady, single-phase, 3D flow. The govern-
ing equations describing the flow and heat transfer are the
Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572 561

Fig. 1 The geometrical

configuration of internally-
ribbed tube

conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy, C2e are constants (1.42 and 1.68 correspondingly); Gk
which are developed from conservation laws of physics and represents the generation of turbulence kinetic energy due
can be summarized in the time-averaged form as follows. to the mean velocity gradients; the influence of the buoy-
Continuity equation: ancy on e is determined by means of constant C3e; Gb is the
o turbulent kinetic energy generation due to buoyancy [32].
ðqui Þ ¼ 0 ð1Þ
oxi
2.2 Boundary conditions
Momentum equation:
o
osij op For the inlet boundary condition, the uniform profiles for
qui uj ¼  þ qgi ð2Þ all the properties are as follows:
oxj oxj oxi
Gi ¼ G0 ; T ¼ T0 ; k ¼ k0 ; e ¼ e0 : ð6Þ
Energy equation:
   The turbulent kinetic energy, k0, and the turbulent
o cp lt oT oui

kþ  quj Cp T þ sij eff ¼ 0 ð3Þ kinetic energy dissipation, e0, in the inlet section are
oxj Prt oxj oxj
approximated from the turbulent intensity, I, and a
where k is the thermal conductivity and Prt is the turbulent turbulent characteristic length, L, as follows:
Prandtl number. There are very few acknowledged exper-
3 k3=2
imental data for Prt of supercritical pressure fluids. The k0 ¼ ðu0 IÞ2 ; e0 ¼ Cl3=4 : ð7Þ
2 L
general method is to use the constant turbulent Prandtl
number, which has originally been assigned for constant At the outlet, the diffusion fluxes for all variables in exit
property fluids, for the supercritical fluids of highly vari- direction are set to be zero.
able property. Based on available empirical and direct In addition, uniform wall heat flux condition is widely
numerical simulations data, the constant 0.85 is used in this used and validated by the previous experiments [15, 20, 25,
study [28]. 33], so no slip and constant heat flux boundary conditions
For the turbulent flow and heat transfer simulation, the are applied on the outside wall of tube as follows:
RNG j-e model and the enhanced wall function are ui ¼ 0; q ¼ qw : ð8Þ
adopted in this study since its performance has been found
to be substantially better than that of the other j-e models 2.3 Computational details
and j-w for heat transfer and flow of supercritical water
[24, 29–31]. The turbulence models can be expressed as The governing equations for flow and heat transfer in heat
follows: exchangers were solved in the Cartesian coordinate system
Turbulent kinetic energy equation: with a control volume finite difference method. The SIM-
  PLE algorithm was used to resolve the coupling between
o o ok
ðui kqÞ ¼ ðak leff Þ þ Gk þ Gb  qe ð4Þ velocity and pressure. The QUICK scheme was used to
oxi oxj oxj
discretize the momentum and energy equations. Consid-
Turbulent dissipation rate equation: ering the numerical stability of supercritical fluid, the
  second order upwind scheme was used for other transport
o o oe e
ðui eqÞ ¼ ðae leff Þ þ C1e ðC3e Gb þ Gk Þ equations [34]. The numerical computation is considered to
oxi oxj oxj k
be convergent when the residual summed over all the
e2
 C2e q  Re ð5Þ computational nodes at the nth iteration is no more than
k
10-6.
where leff stand for the effective viscosity; rk and re rep- For accurate and efficient computation as well as ease of
resent the turbulent Prandtl numbers for k and e; C1e and grid generation for this complex configuration, the

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Fig. 2 Local unstructured grids on internally-ribbed tube
Table 1 A28 9 6 mm four-head internally-ribbed tube geometric
parameter
Parameter
Outer diameter dout/mm
Max inner diameter dmax/mm
Wall thickness/mm
Head number N
Rib width b/mm
Rib height H/mm
Thread pitch S/mm
Lead l/mm
Spiral rising angle a/°
computational region was composed of unstructured hybrid
grids. The final mesh of present work was obtained after
several grid adaptions based on y? in order to resolve the
heat transfer coefficient accurately. In order to obtain the
satisfactory solutions for supercritical water in internally-
ribbed tube, the grid independence is carried out in the
analysis by adopting different amounts of grid cells. When
the computational grids consist of about 1.10 million vol-
umes, no visible grid influence on the heat transfer coef-
ficient and resistance coefficient was observed. The local
refined grid topology of internally-ribbed tube is shown in
Fig. 2.
3 Model validation and parameters considered
3.1 Model validation
The experiments for verifying the present numerical work
were carried out in the high-temperature and high-pressure
flow test loop at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Experimental
results were obtained with water flowing upwards in uni-
formly heated vertical internally-ribbed tube under
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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
Fig. 3 Inner wall temperature versus bulk flow enthalpy
supercritical pressure. The geometric parameters of inter-
Size
nally-ribbed tube are shown in Table 1. The heated length
28 of the test section was 500 mm, and the unheated length
16.0 upstream of the test section was 150 mm. The fluid tem-
6.0 perature was measured by 10 pairs of NiCr-NiSi sheathed
4 thermocouples installed in the test section. The 30 ther-
9 mocouples were welded onto the tube outer surface to
0.81 measure the outside wall temperature. The experimental
21 conditions simulated are as follows: the pressure at the inlet
82 of the test section is 26 MPa; the mass flux of the water is
61.15° 600 kg/m2s; the heat flux on the inside wall of the tube is
500 kW/m2.
Figure 3 shows the inner wall temperature variation
with the bulk flow enthalpy in the vertically upward
internally-ribbed tube. It can be seen that the numerical
results agree well with experimental results when the
enthalpy is lower than 1,900 kJ/kg, while the numerical
results are higher than the experimental results when the
enthalpy is above 1,900 kJ/kg. This phenomenon is mainly
due to that high enthalpy water is in the large heat region,
where the near-wall fluid physical properties change dra-
matically with increased temperature, leading to a complex
flow field, which can not be simulated perfectly. Although
both the enhanced wall function and the near wall grid
refinement are used to calculate the near wall flow field,
there still exists certain deviation. However, the numerical
results agree well with the experimental data on the whole,
the relative deviation between simulated prediction and
experimental data is smaller than 5 %. The above com-
parison reveals that both the model and the grid in this
paper are valid and reliable.
3.2 Parameters considered
In designing an internally-ribbed tube, the main geometric
parameters of the internally-ribbed tube include spiral
Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572 563

Table 2 The structural parameters of internally-ribbed tubes and plain tube

Parameter Plain tube Tube 1 Tube 2 Tube 3 Tube 4 Tube 5 Tube 6 Tube 7

Outer diameter dout/mm 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14

Max inner diameter dmax/mm 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Wall thickness/mm 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Head number N 0 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Rib width b/mm 0 4 4 4 2 6 8 4
Rib height H/mm 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1
Thread pitch S/mm 0 13.6 7.85 29.3 13.6 13.6 13.6 13.6
Lead l/mm 0 54.4 31.4 117.2 54.4 54.4 54.4 54.4
Spiral rising angle a (°) 0 60 45 75 60 60 60 60

Table 3 The mass flow and heat flux for numerical simulation
Working condition Parameter
Mass flow G (kg/m2s) 500, 700, 900, 1,100, 1,300, 1,500
Heat flux qw (kW/m2) 50, 150, 250, 350, 450
rising angle, rib height and rib width. 7 internally-ribbed
tubes and 1 same diameter plain tube are investigated in
this paper, and the detailed structural parameters are shown
in Table 2. Due to the significant variation of operational
condition in the supercritical boiler, wide mass flow and
heat flux ranges are designed in numerical simulations to
cover the conditions of a practical boiler. Details are pre-
sented in Table 3.
1. It is found that the tangential velocity increases with the
G rise. The flow resistance in the channel is proportional to
the square of fluid velocity, and the axial flow resistance in
channel increases with the G rise, thus, there is more tan-
gential flow through the helical grooves in the tube.
Obviously, the higher the tangential velocity is, the more
remarkable the heat transfer enhancement grows. However,
when q = 450 kW/m2 and G = 500 kg/m2s, Nu is con-
siderably below that it should be. It can be explained as
follows: smaller G leads to less tangential flow which
would bring a thicker fluid boundary layer near the wall to
weaken heat transfer.
4.1.2 Influence of heat flux on heat transfer

Figure 4d–f show the influence of heat flux on heat

4 Results and discussion
4.1 Heat transfer characteristics
When mass flux is maintained constant, HTD may happen
and the surface heat transfer coefficient may decrease
sharply with further increase of heat flux. In the present
study, mass fluxes are all greater than 500 kg/m2s and heat
fluxes are all less than 450 kW/m2, so no deterioration
phenomenon appears [10].
4.1.1 Influence of mass flow on heat transfer
The simulated results for Tube 1, Tube 2 and Tube 3 are
presented in Fig. 4a–c. Obviously, for internally-ribbed
tubes, Nu increases monotonously with Re and shows good
linearity. The results for other internally-ribbed tubes are
also similar to those of the above 3 tubes. With increased
mass flow, both axial and circumferential velocities
increase significantly, and the generation and development
rate of flow turbulence become higher, therefore the heat
transfer is enhanced. Figure 5a–c show the comparison of
tangential velocity fields for different G in the case of Tube
transfer for Tube 1, Tube 2 and Tube 3. Nu variation
tendency presents certain linearity with increased heat
flux. Similar results have been obtained for other inter-
nally-ribbed tubes. It can be seen from Fig. 5a, d and e
that the tangential velocity fields for different q were very
similar, but the region of the tangential flow increases
with q rise. This could decrease the wake region in the
helical groove to enhance the local heat transfer. In
addition, for proper mass flux, the temperature gradient
between inner wall and bulk fluid and the turbulence
generation rate increase with increased heat flux, resulting
in the increase of surface heat transfer coefficient. In the
present study, all the mass flux values are higher than the
mass flux that would happen HTD, so the surface heat
transfer coefficient increases with increased heat flux.
When the mass flux is higher than 900 kg/m2s, as long as
the heat flux is over 450 kW/m2, it seems that Nu is
varied with a higher magnitude. This is so called heat
transfer promotion phenomenon. It is because that the
specific heat of supercritical water is larger and its heat
absorption capacity is also greater in the large specific
heat region. When the heat flux is high enough, more heat
will be transferred to the supercritical water.

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564 Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572

Fig. 4 Influence of mass flow (a–c) and heat flux (d–f) on heat transfer

4.1.3 Influence of spiral rising angle on heat transfer effect, the significant change of supercritical water turbu-
lence intensity has completed in unheated section. As the
Figure 6a, b show the influence of spiral rising angle on spiral rising angle decreases, the bulk fluid turbulence
heat transfer in internally-ribbed tubes. Due to the entrance intensity increases dramatically and the fluid tangential

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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
Fig. 5 Influence of mass flow (a–c) and heat flux (a, e, f) on
tangential velocity fields
velocity becomes higher, resulting in the enhancement of
heat transfer.
Under the working condition of q = 450 kW/m2 and
G = 500 kg/m2s, the bulk fluid turbulence intensity vari-
ation in the axial direction is shown in Fig. 7a. It can be
seen that the smaller the spiral rising angle is, the greater
the bulk fluid turbulence intensity is. The energy exchange
between wall and bulk fluid becomes more intense, leading
to the increase of surface heat transfer coefficient. How-
ever, the greater turbulence intensity may cause greater
energy loss. Therefore, the spiral rising angle should be
further optimized according to the heat transfer and resis-
tance characteristics of the internally-ribbed tube.
Figure 8a, b show the comparison of tangential velocity
fields between Tube 1 and Tube 2 at q = 450 kW/m2 and
G = 500 kg/m2s. As the spiral rising angle decreases, the
tangential velocity of the fluid in the internally-ribbed tube
increases significantly. The relative velocity between the
bulk fluid and the near-wall fluid may increase, which may
reduce the thickness of the near-wall laminar boundary
layer. Moreover, the centrifugal force induced by the spiral
flow can also strengthen the mass and energy exchange
between the fluid near wall and the bulk fluid. Obviously,
the smaller the spiral rising angle is, the greater the
565
tangential velocity is and the more widely the tangential
velocity changes. For instance, under the same axial
velocity, the greatest tangential velocity is 0.7 m/s when
the spiral rising angle is 45°, while the value is only 0.4 m/
s when the spiral rising angle is 60°.
4.1.4 Influence of rib width on heat transfer
Figure 6c, d show the influence of rib width on heat transfer
in internally-ribbed tubes. When the rib width is varied from
2 to 8 mm, insignificant effect on heat transfer can be found.
It is because that heat transfer is the energy exchange
between the wall and the bulk fluid as well as the generation
and development process of the turbulence, but the change of
rib width does not exert a significant influence on the velocity
distribution in tube. Therefore the change of rib width does
not have significant influence on the heat transfer of super-
critical water. For different rib widths, the Nu variation with
Re performs obvious similarity in wide heat flux and mass
flow ranges. So, it is unnecessary to take primary consider-
ation on rib width during the design of internally-ribbed tube.
Figure 7b shows the turbulence intensity variation in the
axial direction for different rib widths when q = 450 kW/
m2 and G = 500 kg/m2s. It can be found that the tendency
and the absolute value of turbulence intensity are almost
identical. In addition, Fig. 8c, d show the bulk fluid tan-
gential velocity distributions for Tube 4 and Tube 6. It can
be seen that, similar to the results of the density distribu-
tion, the distributions of the fluid tangential velocity are
also almost identical even if the rib widths are different. So,
it can be concluded that rib width has a very weak influence
on the heat transfer of supercritical water.
4.1.5 Influence of rib height on heat transfer
Figure 6e, f show the influence of rib height on heat
transfer. As the rib height increases from 0.5 to 1.0 mm,
the surface heat transfer coefficient increases to certain
extent, indicating that the increase of rib height rise can
give rise to the heat transfer enhancement for the same
mass flow and heat flux.
Figure 7c shows the turbulence intensity variation in the
axial direction with different rib heights under the working
condition of q = 450 kW/m2 and G = 500 kg/m2s. There
is an obvious difference between rib heights of 0.5 and
1.0 mm, illustrating that the change of rib height can lead
to the change of turbulence intensity of supercritical water.
The higher the rib height is, the greater the turbulence
intensity is and the stronger the mass and energy exchange
between the wall and the bulk fluid is. Therefore, the heat
transfer is enhanced accordingly.
Figure 8a, e show the tangential velocity distributions in
Tube 1 and Tube 7. For different rib heights, the tangential
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566 Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572

Fig. 6 Influence of spiral rising angle (a, b), rib width (c, d) and rib height (e, f) on heat transfer

velocities are quite different with each other. Moreover, the
tangential velocity increases with increased rib height. The
flow inside the internally-ribbed tube can be recognized as
the resultant of the axial fluid flow over the rib and the
circumferential fluid flow along the spiral channel. Both the
two kinds of flows will become much stronger as the rib
height gets higher, resulting in much more significant tur-
bulence increase. In addition, the density distribution tends
to be more uniform as the rib height increase from 0.5 to
1.0 mm, indicating that the rib height increase can effi-
ciently reduce the density gradient and improve the heat
transfer.

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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
Fig. 7 Influence of spiral rising angle (a), rib width (b) and rib height
(c) on turbulence intensity
The maximum tangential velocity increases from 0.4 to
1.55 m/s as the rib height changes from 0.5 to 1.0 mm.
Because the tangential velocity can significantly influence
the fluid turbulence intensity and temperature distribution
[34], the increase of tangential velocity can be beneficial
567
Fig. 8 Influence of spiral rising angle (a, b), rib width (c, d) and rib
height (a, e) on tangential velocity fields
to the enhancement of heat transfer. Hence, the increase of
rib height can generate the heat transfer enhancement
effect.
4.2 Resistance characteristics in the internally-ribbed
tube
Pressure drop is another main parameter in heat exchanger
design, and it is characterized by the resistance coefficient
f here.
4.2.1 Influence of mass flux on resistance characteristics
Figure 9 shows the resistance coefficient variation with the
mass flux for the internally-ribbed tube with various
structural parameters. It can be seen that the resistance
coefficient decreases with the increase of Re. For all the
internally-ribbed tubes, the decrease rate of resistance
coefficient with Re are fast at first and slow subsequently,
and it approaches a constant values as Re increases, indi-
cating that the supercritical water flow has entered the so
called self-modeling region. In addition, for different
internally-ribbed tube structural parameters and heat fluxes,
there are different asymptotic coefficients, revealing that
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Fig. 9 Influence of mass flow on resistance characteristics
the influences of structural parameter and heat flux on
resistance are quite significant.
4.2.2 Influence of heat flux on resistance characteristics
Figure 10 shows the resistance coefficient variation with
heat flux under various structural parameters. It can be seen
that resistance coefficient increases with increased heat flux
for all the internally-ribbed tubes. It is because that the
increase of heat flux leads to the increase of temperature
gradient and the turbulence dissipation rate of supercritical
water, which is consistent with Wang’s experimental
results [35].
For a given internally-ribbed tube, the increment of
resistance coefficient with heat flux differs, depending on
mass flux. When G [ 1,100 kg/m2s, the increment from
q = 50 kW/m2 to q = 450 kW/m2 is great, approaching
50 %. When G B 1,100 kg/m2s, this increment is much
greater, approaching 100 %. In addition, it can be seen
from Fig. 10 that the increase rate of resistance coefficient
gets faster and faster with increasing heat flux except the
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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
working condition of G = 500 kg/m2s. When
2 2
q = 450 kW/m and G = 500 kg/m s, the boundary layer
near the inner wall is fairly thick. The energy exchange
between the wall and the bulk fluid will be inhibited,
resulting in weak turbulence generation and development,
and reduced shear stress as well. Hence, the resistance
coefficient decreases.
4.2.3 Influence of spiral rising angle on resistance
characteristics
Figure 11a, b show the influence of spiral rising angle on
resistance coefficient. For all the heat fluxes and mass
fluxes, the resistance coefficient increases with reduced
spiral rising angle. With increased mass flux, the flow in
tubes will enters the self-modeling region finally. How-
ever, the higher the heat flux is, the greater the corre-
sponding Re needed to reach the self-modeling region is.
For instance, the bulk fluid enters the self-modeling
region when Re [ 140,000 for q = 150 kW/m2 and
q = 250 kW/m2, whereas the bulk fluid does not enter
Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
Fig. 10 Influence of heat flux on resistance characteristics
the self-modeling region until Re [ 220,000 for
q = 350 kW/m2 and q = 450 kW/m2. For high heat flux
and low mass flux, the boundary layer near the inner
wall may be fairly thick, resulting in weak turbulence
and reduced shear stress. The tiny change of inner wall
structure can lead to the change of fluid layer structure,
which will dramatically affect the velocity gradient
between wall and bulk fluid as well as the near-wall flow
sheer stress, leading to the change of resistance coeffi-
cient. Besides, under all working conditions, the resis-
tance coefficients of internally-ribbed tubes are 2–5 times
that of the plain tube.
4.2.4 Influence of rib width on resistance characteristics
Figure 11c, d show the influence of rib width on the
resistance coefficient. Obviously, the resistance variation
with Re are essentially coincident with each other,
revealing that the change of rib width does not lead to
569
obvious variation of resistance for given heat flux and mass
flux. As illustrated in Fig. 8c, d, the change of rib width
does not give rise to a significant change of flow field.
Therefore, rib width has no considerable effect on the
resistance coefficient as well.
4.2.5 Influence of rib height on resistance characteristics
Figure 11e, f show the influence of rib height on the
resistance coefficient. It can be seen that the resistance
coefficient for 1.0 mm rib height is greater than that for
0.5 mm rib height over wide heat flux and mass flux ran-
ges. As shown in Fig. 7c, the supercritical water turbulence
intensity value for 1.0 mm rib height is much greater than
that for 0.5 mm rib height, which may result from the
dissipation of the fluid energy. Therefore, higher resistance
coefficient is induced. As illustrated in Fig. 8a, e, the tan-
gential velocity increases with increased rib height, greater
resistance coefficient will be induced as well.
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570 Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572

Fig. 11 Influence of spiral rising angle (a, b), rib width (c, d) and rib height (e, f) on resistance characteristics

5 Conclusions resistance characteristics under supercritical pressure, fol-

lowing conclusions can be drawn:
Numerical simulations on turbulent mixed convection in
1. When mass flux is greater than 500 kg/m2s and heat
internally-ribbed tube have been performed to investigate
flux is less than 450 kW/m2, the heat transfer in
the influence of geometric parameters on heat transfer and

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Heat Mass Transfer (2014) 50:559–572
internally-ribbed tube is enhanced with increased mass
flow under a fixed heat flux. Moreover, the heat
transfer is also enhanced with increased heat flux.
2. The fluid tangential velocity and main flow turbulent
intensity increase significantly with reduced spiral
rising angle or increased rib height, leading to the
increase of heat transfer coefficient, and rib width has a
weak influence on the internally-ribbed tube heat
transfer.
3. The heat flux increase promotes the radial temperature
gradient and the turbulent dissipation rate of super-
critical water, so the resistance coefficient increases
accordingly. Under a certain mass flux, the resistance
coefficient of internally-ribbed tube increases with
reduced spiral rising angle or increased rib height.
However, there appears no obvious influence of rib
width on the resistance characteristic.
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