ABSTRACT

GUO, SHUJIE. Numerical Study of T-junction Thermal Mixing using PHASTA. (Under the
direction of Dr. Igor A. Bolotnov).

Thermal fatigue is an important topic in nuclear engineering and design. It affects the

reactor safety and lifetime of plant components. The T-junction thermal mixing is typically used

to evaluate the code performance as it is a good example where the thermal fatigue can be

observed. Thus, a lot of effort was offered to predict flow behaviors in T-junction thermal mixing

by both experiment and simulation methods. CFD codes achieved good validation based on

Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing experiment data. The objective of the present study is to

validate PHASTA heat transfer capabilities with implicit LES approach for T-junction thermal

mixing problem. To control computational cost adiabatic case was tested based on both under and

highly resolved mesh, and the mixing phenomenon was presented. Simulations show the same

streamwise velocity distribution features with the experiment and the results agree well with the

experimental data. Considering the effect of heat transfer between the fluid and pipe wall,

conjugate heat transfer (CHT) code was implemented in PHASTA and CHT case was tested with

both Plexiglas and stainless steel pipe walls. Error analysis was developed to quantify the error of

the simulation and experimental results. Based on the experiment uncertainty and fluctuation of

simulation results, different factors were tested and compared. The most appropriate one was

chosen to evaluate the error of simulations. The results prove that with the growth of computational

costs, the factor fluctuates around a value which could measure heat transfer capabilities of

PHASTA code.
© Copyright 2021 by Shujie Guo

All Rights Reserved

 Numerical Study of T-junction Thermal Mixing using PHASTA

by
Shujie Guo

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

North Carolina State University
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Science

Nuclear Engineering

Raleigh, North Carolina

2021

APPROVED BY:

_______________________________ _______________________________
Dr. I. A. Bolotnov Dr. N. Dinh
Committee Chair

_______________________________
Dr. M. A. Diaconeasa
 BIOGRAPHY

The author graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU) with a Bachelor of

Engineering degree in Nuclear Engineering in 2019. As an undergraduate student at XJTU, she

worked on a research project with professors in developing experiments focusing on studying the

leakage due to a micro crack in the steam generator heat transfer tubes. While studying in XJTU,

she was awarded the Siyuan Scholarship and attended a summer exchange program in University

of Wisconsin, Madison, where she decided to apply for a graduate program in the United States.

She joined the Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University in 2019

focusing on thermal hydraulics, especially the field of computational fluid dynamics under the

supervision of Dr. Igor A. Bolotnov. As hobbies, she enjoys reading, travelling and music.

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my family. I would like to give my ultimate thanks to my parents who

give me the strength and confidence when I was facing the difficulties and support me persistently

whatever decision I made. My family is always the most important energy source to me especially

during this unusual period with the threat of Covid-19. They are the ones who give me abundant

love and unconditional support throughout my life and help me to realize my dream as an engineer.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Igor A. Bolotnov. Without his help I

would not be able to complete my master study. He offers much patience and conscientiousness

to train me for research. I would like to thank Dr. Dalin Zhang, who lead me into the nuclear

engineering and her passion and perseverance to the nuclear engineering affect me during my

undergraduate study. I would also like to thank the professors giving me help during my master

study, Dr. Jason Hou, Dr. Djamel Kaoumi, Dr. Pramod Subbareddy, Dr. Mihai A. Diaconeasa, Dr.

Mohammed Zikry and Dr. Dan Harris.

I would like to thank Joy Fan, who helped me to spend the hard time of culture shock after

I came to the United States and offered me much help when I was facing the difficulties. I would

like to thank all of my friends in the department of nuclear engineering. Thanks to the other

groupmates who gave much advice for my research. Saini Nadish and Matthew Zimmer gave me

awesome tutorial and introduction of the PHASTA code and helped me to solve numerious issues.

Thanks to Xinya Tao, one of my best friends, whose company is one of the most important energy

resources for me.

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .........................................................................................................................vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii

CHAPTER 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER 2. Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 3

2.1 Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing overview .................................................................... 3

2.2 T-junction thermal mixing simulations review ..................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 3. Numerical Approach ................................................................................................ 8

3.1 PHASTA overview ................................................................................................................ 8

3.2 Governing equations .............................................................................................................. 9

3.3 Thermal boundary layer test ................................................................................................ 10

3.4 CHT capability preliminary test .......................................................................................... 12

CHAPTER 4. Simulation Setup .................................................................................................... 16

4.1 Adiabatic case setup ............................................................................................................ 16

4.1.1 Under-resolved case ..................................................................................................... 17

4.1.2 Refined case.................................................................................................................. 21

4.2 Conjugate heat transfer case ................................................................................................ 25

4.2.1 CHT under-resolved case model setup ......................................................................... 25

4.2.2 CHT resolved case setup .............................................................................................. 27

CHAPTER 5. Results and Discussion ........................................................................................... 31

5.1 Adiabatic case result analysis .............................................................................................. 31

5.1.1 Results of the under-resolved cases .............................................................................. 33

5.1.2 Well-resolved case........................................................................................................ 36

iv
 5.2 CHT case results analysis .................................................................................................... 39

5.2.1 CHT under-resolved case ............................................................................................. 39

5.2.2 CHT parallel plate case ................................................................................................ 44

5.3 Error analysis ....................................................................................................................... 49

CHAPTER 6. Conclusions and Future work ................................................................................. 54

6.1 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 54

6.2 Future work ......................................................................................................................... 56

REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 58

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................... 62

Appendix A ............................................................................................................................... 63

Appendix B ................................................................................................................................ 64

v
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Inlet conditions [2] ............................................................................................................ 3

Table 2. Fluid properties in PreCase 1 & 2 ................................................................................... 11

Table 3. The energy conservation validation results of PreCase 1 and PreCase 2 ........................ 12

Table 4. The fluid properties and wall properties for PreCase 3 and PreCase 4 ........................... 14

Table 5. Heat flux calculation based on the Fig. 7 results of PreCase 3&4 .................................. 15

Table 6. Fluid properties [2] .......................................................................................................... 18

Table 7. Mesh resolutions of Case 1&2 along the streamwise direction ...................................... 19

Table 8. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 + Value of sections in Case 1&2 ....................... 20

Table 9. Mesh resolutions of Case 3along the streamwise direction ............................................ 22

Table 10. Mesh resolutions of Case 4&5 along the streamwise direction .................................... 24

Table 11. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 + Value of sections in Case 4&5 ..................... 25

Table 12. The properties of the wall .............................................................................................. 26

Table 13. Mesh resolutions of Case 7 along the main inlet streamwise (z axis) and branch inlet

streamwise (y axis) directions ....................................................................................... 29

Table 14. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 + Value of sections in Case 7 .......................... 30

Table 15. Summary table for adiabatic cases ................................................................................ 31

Table 16. Summary table for CHT cases....................................................................................... 31

Table 17. The areas of the analytical, artificial and overlapped for three comparisons ................ 52

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1. The schematic of the Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing experiment [2] ....................... 3

Fig. 2. The schematic of WALTON T-junction thermal mixing experiment [11] .......................... 6

Fig. 3. The mesh design of (a) side wall (b) cross-section in laminar pipe case ........................... 11

Fig. 4. The temperature distributions at (a) vertical section and (b) cross section in PreCase 1;

at (c) vertical section and (d) cross section in PreCase 2 ................................................... 12

Fig. 5. Mesh design of the parallel plate case................................................................................ 13

Fig. 6. Temperature distributions at vertical section of (a) PreCase 3 and (b) PreCase 4 at

simulation time 47.1s ......................................................................................................... 14

Fig. 7. Temperature profiles at the outlet cross section of (a) PreCase 3 and (b) PreCase 4 at

simulation time 47.1s ......................................................................................................... 15

Fig. 8. Vattenfall T-junction experimental test section reproduced for simulations shown with

computational mesh (unit: mm) [2] .................................................................................... 17

Fig. 9. The boundary layer mesh design of the under-resolved case (a) the overall mesh of the

cross-section within the most refined region; (b) zoom into the boundary layer region ... 18

Fig. 10. The mesh transition near the outlet of the under-resolved case ....................................... 19

Fig. 11. the virtual probe distribution at the cross-section ............................................................ 21

Fig. 12. Model size of shortened inlets with mesh (unit: mm) ...................................................... 22

Fig. 13. Velocity distribution of Case 1 at (a) z/D=1.6 and (b) z/D=4.6; of Case 3 at (c) z/D=

1.6 and (d) z/D=4.6 .......................................................................................................... 23

Fig. 14. Streamwise velocity profiles comparison of Case 1 and Case 3 at z/D=1.6 along (a) x

axis and (b) y axis; at z/D=4.6 along (c) x axis and (d) y axis ......................................... 23

vii
Fig. 15. The boundary layer mesh design of the well-resolved case (a) overall mesh of cross-

section within the most refined region; (b) zoom into the boundary layer region ........... 24

Fig. 16. Mesh transition near the outlet of the well-resolved case ................................................ 24

Fig. 17. Case 6 with mesh generated for CHT code validation ..................................................... 26

Fig. 18. The transient (a) temperature and (b) velocity magnitude distributions of Case 6 .......... 27

Fig. 19. The temperature profile in the midplane at (a) y=0.15; (b) z=-0.4 .................................. 27

Fig. 20. the schematic of the innovative model with gap applied with periodic condition ........... 28

Fig. 21. CHT parallel plate case with mesh (unit: mm) ................................................................ 29

Fig. 22. The model schematic at the junction upper corners ......................................................... 30

Fig. 23. (a) Unsteady-state and (b) Steady-state examples of three-window method used to

determine the simulation state.......................................................................................... 32

Fig. 24. Average (a) temperature and (b) streamwise velocity fields of Case 1; average (c)

temperature and (b) streamwise velocity distributions of Case 2. ................................... 33

Fig. 25. Average streamwise velocity fields for (a) Case 1 (b) Case 2 at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6

and for (c) Case 1 (d) Case 2 at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6........................................................ 34

Fig. 26. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 1 and Case 2 at location (a) z/D=1.6 and

(b) z/D=4.6 along x axis; at cross-section location (c) z/D=1.6 and (d) z/D=4.6 along y

axis ................................................................................................................................... 35

Fig. 27. The streamwise velocity fields of (a) Case 4 and (b) Case 5 at location z/D=1.6 and (c)

Case 4 and (d) Case 5 at location z/D=4.6. ...................................................................... 36

Fig. 28. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 4 and Case 5 at location (a) z/D=1.6 and

(b) z/D=4.6 along x axis; at cross-section location (c) z/D=1.6 and (d) z/D=4.6 along y

axis ................................................................................................................................... 37

viii
Fig. 29. Temperature comparisons between the results of Case 5 and experiment data at (a)

top, (b) bottom, (c) left and (d) right walls along streamwise directions ......................... 39

Fig. 30. Average (a) temperature and (b) velocity fields of vertical section in Case 6 ................. 40

Fig. 31. Average temperature fields of cross sections at (a) 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and (b) 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 ..... 41

Fig. 32. Average temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 along y axis .... 41

Fig. 33. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2, the temperature file over time of the (a) top, (c) bottom, (e)

left and (g)right wall and the corresponding temperature spectrum (b)(d)(f)(h) ............. 42

Fig. 34. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4, the temperature file over time of the (a) top, (c) bottom, (e)

left and (g)right wall and the corresponding temperature spectrum (b)(d)(f)(h) ............. 43

Fig. 35. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of vertical section in

Case 7 ............................................................................................................................... 45

Fig. 36. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of cross section at

𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 in Case 7........................................................................................................ 45

Fig. 37. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of cross section at

𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 in Case 7 ....................................................................................................... 46

Fig. 38. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 7 along y axis at location (a) z/D = 1.6

and (b) z/D = 4.6 .............................................................................................................. 47

Fig. 39. Average temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 along y axis .... 47

Fig. 40. Average temperature profile of top wall along the streamwise direction in Case 7 ........ 48

Fig. 41. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2, the temperature profiles over time of the (a) top and (c) bottom

wall and the corresponding temperature spectrums (b)(d) ............................................... 48

Fig. 42. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4, the temperature profiles over time of the (a) top and (c) bottom

wall and the corresponding temperature spectrums (b)(d) ............................................... 49

ix
Fig. 43. The comparison of (a) 10 samples, (b) 100 samples, and (c) 1000 samples of artificial

results and analytical results ............................................................................................ 51

Fig. 44. The error analysis to the results of Case 5 ....................................................................... 52

Fig. 45. The values of three indexes with the computational cost ................................................ 53

x
 CHAPTER 1. Introduction

T-junction is a common component in various industrial systems such as nuclear power

plants and chemical processing plants. One important function of T-junction is to mix flows with

different physical properties including thermal mixing. However, at the center of the junction

component where hot and cold fluids mix with each other, significant temperature fluctuations

could be introduced and may lead to thermal fatigue on the pipe structures. With respect to nuclear

plant, thermal fatigue, which may cause pipe crack and even leak, is always a non-negligible

concern to system safety and could affect the ageing and lifetime of plant components. Several

accidents occurred because of T-junction thermal fatigue, including the accident of Civaux-1 in

France in 1998 mainly due to the thermal fatigue occurring in T-junction of Residual Heat Remove

(RHR) system [1].

For monitoring and detecting thermal fatigue are limited by sensor response time,

prediction with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes obtains great interests to control the

risk. The objective of this work is to validate PHASTA heat transfer capabilities based on the

Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing experiment [2]. The work includes the validation to the

single-phase turbulent thermal mixing under adiabatic condition and the study of conjugate heat

transfer (CHT) capabilities of PHASTA code.

Chapter 2 presents a literature review that discusses previous research on T-junction

thermal mixing phenomenon including both experimental and numerical achievements.

Chapter 3 gives an introduction to the simulation tool, PHASTA code and describes the

validation effort to study the heat transfer capabilities of the PHASTA code with and without CHT

under simple geometry and laminar flow. The two tests prove the potential of heat transfer

capabilities of the PHASTA code within T-junction thermal mixing simulation.

1
 Chapter 4 describes the simulation setup, which contains: (i) adiabatic case setup and mesh

designs and (ii) CHT case setup and mesh designs. The detailed model descriptions and the

properties are shown, with the mesh study.

Chapter 5 presents the results of both diabatic and CHT cases. It includes result discussion

on the phenomenon of T-junction thermal mixing simulation, the comparison between the

experiment and simulation results and the analysis of conjugate heat transfer results, and error

analysis method.

Chapter 6 covers the conclusions and future work.

2
 CHAPTER 2. Literature Review

2.1 Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing overview

In 2006, T-junction thermal mixing experiment was developed by Älvkarleby Laboratory

of Vattenfall Research and Development [2] in Sweden and groups of reliable experiment results

were generated. The experiment facility shown in Fig. 1 with the cold water importing by the

horizontal pipe and the hot water by the vertical pipe is manufactured by Plexiglas. The

temperatures and volumetric flow rates of two inlets are shown in the Table 1. Along the

downstream, Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) was used to measure the fluid velocities at the

location 0.224m and 0.644m, and thermal couples were set for the temperature measurements at

the top, left, bottom and right sides. Various CFD codes such as ANSYS and Nek5000 are

validated based on the experimental data [2].

Fig. 1. The schematic of the Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing experiment [2]

Table 1. Inlet conditions [2]

Inlet Temperature (°C) Pipe diameter (mm) Volumetric flow rate (l/s)
Main 19 140 9.0
Branch 36 100 6.0

3
 A great deal of benchmark research work [3][4][5][6] was done based on Vattenfall

experiments and achieved good validation with the data, which indicates that Vattenfall

experiment data is reliable to use for CFD code validation.

Since Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations are not designed to capture the

fluctuation features of the velocity and temperature profiles, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is the

most common method utilized for these simulations. Kim and Jeong [3] developed Vattenfall T-

junction simulation using LES based on the dynamic Vreman model [7]. The simulation results

show that Reynolds shear stress, turbulence intensity and mean velocity profiles are well predicted.

The T-junction thermal mixing was also tested with ANSYS code. Höhne [4] performed a

prediction with ANSYS CFX-12 in 2014. Two-equation turbulence model, Shear Stress Transport

Model [8], was utilized for the steady-state calculation and LES was for the transient calculation.

The velocity field and mean temperature agree well with the experiment results, and the

fluctuations and frequencies are close to the experimental data, while the simulation failed to

provide a good prediction for a realistic mixing. In 2019, Kang et al. [5] performed the T-junction

thermal mixing based on ANSYS CFX-16 with detached eddy simulation (DES) model. The

simulation results of velocity agree well with experimental data while at the separation region, a

large temperature difference was observed between the simulation and experiment results. In 2017,

Obabko et al. [6] tested Nek 5000 with the T-junction thermal mixing using LES model and

achieve good agreement with the experimental data.

More effort was given to achieve good prediction for the temperature fluctuation of the

pipe wall and conjugate heat transfer (CHT) is considered. CHT capability involves a fully coupled

resolution of the heat conduction phenomenon in the solid region and heat convection between the

solid and the fluid, which is referred as coupled fluid-solid heat transfer. The Vattenfall

4
experiments [2] give the conclusion that the wall temperature is close to ambient (≈ 15℃) due to

the low conductivity of the pipe wall material, Plexiglas. Besides, other materials such as stainless

steel are also tested in the simulation to validate the effect of materials with different physical

properties.

In 2011, Hannink and Blom [9] coupled CFD and FEM analysis to perform the T-junction

thermal mixing phenomenon for both fluid and solid behavior. The test was based on the Vattenfall

T-junction thermal mixing experiment but the temperature difference between two inlets was

increased from 17K to 80K and AISI 304L stainless steel was chosen to replace the original pipe

material, Plexiglas. Temperature results from the CFD are used in FEM analysis as thermal load,

which induces a linear relationship between the stress and temperature. The stress intensity

fluctuations were provided by the measurements in the test setup and the temperature fluctuations

were obtained since it has linear relationship with the stress intensity fluctuations which is similar

with the linear relationship between temperature and stress.

Timperi [10] performed the temperature distributions of T-junction thermal mixing with

conjugate heat transfer LES. The Smagorinsky SGS model of commercial Star-CD version 4 code

in 2014 and the SIMPLE pressure-correction algorithm were used to solve the flow equations. The

stainless steel was assumed to be the wall material. Timperi compared the results of CHT case and

adiabatic case, and the comparison indicates that different wall boundary conditions could have

similar temperature fluctuations in the logarithmic layer and upward, while at the wall surface, the

fluctuations of CHT case dumped significantly because of the thermal inertia.

2.2 T-junction thermal mixing simulations review

WATLON experiment [11] also focus on the T-junction thermal mixing phenomenon and

the experiment setup shown in Fig. 2. Hot fluid goes through the horizontal main pipe and mixes

5
with the cold fluid from the vertical branch pipe. The differences between the WALTON and

Vattenfall experiment setup are not only the facility size but also the flow directions of the hot and

cold flow. In the Vattenfall experiment, the side flow is hot water down along the branch pipe,

while for WALTON experiment, cold fluid becomes the side flow and goes up in the branch pipe.

Kamaya and Nakamura [12] simulated the thermal mixing phenomenon and fluctuations in wall

by ANSYS CFX 10 using the detached eddy simulation (DES). Besides, relatively large thermal

stress along the symmetry line was discovered and was supposed to result from membrane

constraint. Based on the experimental data, Cenk Evrim and Laurien [13] completed the simulation

on the T-junction thermal mixing prediction using LES method with the OpenFOAM code using

finite volume method. The simulation results demonstrate that the code has good predictive

capabilities for the mean temperature and velocity distributions, as well as the spectral peak of

temperature frequency, with the well-resolved mesh size.

Fig. 2. The schematic of WALTON T-junction thermal mixing experiment [11]

Several validation papers of the conjugate heat transfer were also performed based on the

other experimental data. In 2010, Kuhn et al. [14] demonstrated the capability of LES to predict

6
the T-junction turbulent thermal mixing with dynamic Smagorinsky model for the subgrid scales

(SGS) has good agreement with experimental data. The effect of the wall thickness on the

temperature fluctuations is also revealed as a damping effect in the radial direction. Jayaraju et al.

[15] performed a large eddy simulation with WALE sub-grid-scale model based on the

experimental setup of Andersson et al. in 2006 [16]. With the solver STAR-CCM+, the mean

velocity and temperature profiles were captured while the RMS heat-flux in the stream-wise

direction was under-estimated. In 2015, Selvam et al. [17] presented the investigations on the

temperature fluctuations of T-junction turbulent thermal mixing using LES method with ANSYS

CFX 14.0, based on the experimental data [18] of Fluid–Structure Interaction test facility at the

Materials Testing Institute, University of Stuttgart. The flow directions in the experiment are

different from the Vattenfall T-junction experiment, but the simulation predicts the mean

temperatures well and has good agreement with experimental data, while the root mean square

temperatures have small differences. The energy and amplitude of temperature fluctuations are

also obtained by the numerical simulation. In 2016, Selvam et al. [19] completed a further analysis

on the numerical performance of T-junction thermal mixing behavior. Three inflow temperature

differences were tested within LES method, and stratified flow condition was observed in all three

cases due to the incomplete thermal mixing. The energy of temperature fluctuations in all three

cases is further confirmed that is mainly in the frequency range of 0.1–2 Hz, and the amplitude of

the fluctuations is higher at the region near the stratification layer.

7
 CHAPTER 3. Numerical Approach

3.1 PHASTA overview

PHASTA code [20] is a “Parallel Hierarchic Adaptive Stabilized Transient Analysis” CFD-

solver for both incompressible and compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The application of

PHASTA code on the single-phase flow for both laminar and turbulent conditions has been

developed and the results proved its capability to capture and fully resolve the detailed flow

features. In 1999, Jansen [20] showed that the stabilized finite element method using LES is an

effective approach to simulate the complex flow such as turbulent flow. Later in 2001, Whiting

and Jansen [21] demonstrated the potential benefits using the stabilized finite element method

applied to the simple geometries and laminar flow, and also indicated the positive expectation to

the outcome of turbulent flow using both LES and RANS. In 2006, Tejada-Martínez and Jansen

[22] further validated a new dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid-scale model based on the code using

LES method. The parameter-free model is not necessary to compute the filter width ratio and could

improve the computation of LES with irregularly connected topologies. In 2009, Trofimova et al.

[23] performed turbulent single-phase channel flows with PHASTA code successfully and

demonstrated that this stabilized finite element method using at direct numerical simulation

resolutions could fully resolve the turbulent channel flow. In 2017, Li et al. [24] performed the

heat transfer study of turbulent flow under low Prandtl number, which provide the foundation of

the present work focusing on the heat transfer in T-junction.

The PHASTA code is extended to the two-phase flow simulation with level set method for

interface tracking. In 2013, Bolotnov [25] obtained Reynolds stress distribution for single-phase

and low void fraction two-phase using PHASTA and isotropic turbulence models were analyzed

based on the simulation results. The work indicates that direct numerical simulation (DNS) has the

8
capability to evaluate the applicability of various turbulent models (such as turbulent viscosity

based or Reynolds stress based) by evaluating the flow anisotropy. Mishra and Bolotnov [26]

studied the effect of surface roughness density on the turbulent flow using PHASTA with DNS

level simulation. Cases with different wall roughness were analyzed and provided the basis for the

boundary conditions of the two-phase flow model. In 2018, Fang et al. [27] summarized the

achievement of PHASTA code on the two-phase flow simulation using high performance

computing, including subcooled boiling model and bubble coalescence. The results of single-phase

and bubbly flow in the PWR subchannel were also analyzed. Zimmer and Bolotnov [28] developed

the transition study on the slug-to-churn vertical two-phase flow in 2019. The results are consistent

with the experimental data and theory, which indicate the capabilities of PHASTA code for not

only bubbly flow but also more complex two-phase flow conditions.

Certain capabilities of PHASTA code have been validated and verified, however, the

complex pipe geometry such as T-junction haven’t been tested, and the heat transfer between

different materials neither yet. But based on the previous work, PHASTA code has good potential

to be adapted to the T-junction and CHT condition.

3.2 Governing equations

Incompressible Navier-Stokes (INS) equations are used in the simulations. The spatial and

temporal discretization of INS used in the PHASTA are described by Whiting and Jansen [21],

and the governing equations are given as:

Continuity:

𝛻∙𝒖=0 (1)
Momentum:

𝜕𝑢! (2)
𝜌 + 𝜌∇ ∙ (𝑢! 𝒖) = −𝑃,! + 𝜏#!,! + 𝑓!
𝜕𝑡

9
where u is velocity, 𝑢! is the 𝑖 $% component of velocity, 𝜌 is density, 𝑃,! is pressure gradient, 𝜏#!

is viscous stress tensor, and 𝑓! is the 𝑖 $% component of body force. The viscous stress tensor is

given as:

𝜏#! = 2𝜇𝑆!# = 𝜇C𝑢!,# + 𝑢#,! D (3)

where 𝜇 is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid, and 𝑆!# is the strain rate tensor.

The objective of the current work is to validate PHASTA heat transfer capabilities within

T-junction thermal mixing phenomenon. Thus, heat transfer simulations without CHT are

introduced first and compared with the experiment to test the heat transfer capabilities of the

PHASTA code. Second step is to evaluate CHT capabilities. Before introducing the simulation

setup and results, some validation effort is required to test the PHASTA code in the simple

geometry such as pipe or parallel plates geometries with laminar flow conditions. The effort could

help to understand the potential and possible limitation of the PHASTA code in the following

simulations.

3.3 Thermal boundary layer test

To validate the heat transfer capability of PHASTA code on thermal boundary conditions

(Appendix A), a laminar pipe case was set up. The diameter of the pipe is 0.013 m, and the length

is 0.04 m. The mesh designs of the side wall and cross-section are presented in Fig. 3. The

thicknesses of two boundary layers are 0.3mm and 0.4mm, and the surface mesh resolution is

0.5mm. The number of the elements is 316,160. The simulations took around 30 minutes to reach

steady state with 64 processors.

10
 (a) (b)
Fig. 3. The mesh design of (a) side wall (b) cross-section in laminar pipe case

The fluid properties applied are shown in Table 2. The parabolic velocity profile at the inlet

is set as 𝑢(𝑦, 𝑧) = 2 × (1 − (𝑦 & + 𝑧 & )⁄𝑅& ) and the averaged velocity is 1.0m/s. The

corresponding Reynolds number is 1000 which indicates the laminar flow. The laminar flow pipe

was tested with two thermal boundary conditions of constant temperature 3500K in PreCase 1, and

heat flux 1000W/m& in PreCase 2. The inlet temperature of both cases is set to be 500K.

Table 2. Fluid properties in PreCase 1 & 2

Viscosity/(Pa ∙ s) Density/(kg/m' ) Specific heat/(J/kg ∙ K) Thermal conductivity/(W/m ∙ K)
1.3 × 10() 1.0 115.3486 0.03

The temperature distributions of PreCase 1 and PreCase 2 are shown in Fig. 4. The energy

conversation is tested with the results based on the below equation:

𝑞** 𝐴 = (𝑚̇ℎ+,!$ − 𝑚̇ℎ!- ) (4)

where 𝑞** is the heat flux applied to the wall, A is the area of the side wall, 𝑚̇ is the mass flow rate,

ℎ+,!$ is the enthalpy of the outflow and ℎ!- is the enthalpy of the inflow. The equation (4) whose

results are shown in Table 3 is satisfied by both the cases, which give the conclusion that both the

thermal boundaries are handled well by PHASTA code.

11
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 4. The temperature distributions at (a) vertical section and (b) cross section in PreCase 1; at
(c) vertical section and (d) cross section in PreCase 2

Table 3. The energy conservation validation results of PreCase 1 and PreCase 2

𝑞** 𝐴 𝑚̇ℎ+,!$ − 𝑚̇ℎ!-

PreCase 1 31.28 30.00
PreCase 2 1.63 1.64

3.4 CHT capability preliminary test

CHT capability is first implemented in the PHASTA code (Appendix B) by Nadish Saini

[29]. Since PHASTA could read the set surface to be solid wall and generate the distance of

element to the wall, the elements whose distance to the wall is smaller than the wall thickness

would be recognized as wall elements, and the velocities of these elements would be zero. Based

on his work I further modified code to recognize and apply the different properties for solid and

fluid. The parameters of the solid would be used for calculation when the solid region is read by

the code.

There are two principles to be satisfied in the CHT case at the vicinity of the interface

between the solid and fluid, given by:

12
 𝑇(𝑠) = 𝑇(𝑙) (5)

𝑞′′(𝑠) = 𝑞′′(𝑙) (6)

where T is temperature and 𝑞′′ is heat flux.

To have a preliminary validation on the CHT capability of PHASTA code, a parallel plate

case was created. The length of the plates (along x axis) is 0.1m and the width (along z axis) is

0.02m. The thickness of the plates is 0.001m and the distance between the plates is 0.02m. Both

the top and bottom wall are applied with boundary layers shown in Fig. 5, and the thickness of the

first boundary layer is 0.1mm and boundary layer growth factor is 1.2. The bulk resolution is 1mm.

The number of elements is 286,651. The simulations took around 16 hours to reach steady state

with 64 processors.

Fig. 5. Mesh design of the parallel plate case

Periodic condition is set for the front and back surface. Parabolic velocity profile is applied

as 𝑢(𝑦) = 0.02 × (1 − 𝑦 & ⁄0.01& ) at the inlet and the mean velocity is 0.01667m/s. The

corresponding Reynolds number is 1126, thus the flow is laminar flow. The inlet temperature is

373.15K and heat flux 1000W/m& is applied at the top and bottom wall. The properties of 304L

stainless steel and Plexiglas are selected to be used in PreCase 3 and PreCase 4 show in Table 4,

respectively.

13
 Table 4. The fluid properties and wall properties for PreCase 3 and PreCase 4
Wall
Fluid
PreCase 3 PreCase 4
Viscosity/ (Pa ∙ s) 2.8573 × 10(. ------------- -------------
Density/ (𝑘𝑔/𝑚' ) 965.201 7910.86 1200.0
Specific heat/(𝐽/𝑘𝑔 ∙ 𝐾) 41.8 510.0 1460.0
Thermal conductivity/ (𝑊/𝑚 ∙ 𝐾) 0.687221 15.5 0.190

The temperature distributions of the vertical section are shown in Fig. 6 and the temperature

profile of the cross section at the outlet in Fig. 7. It can be observed that at the interface between

the wall and fluid, the temperature profile is continued, which support that Equation (5) is satisfied.

Heat flux at the vicinity of the interface is calculated as:

𝑑𝑇
𝑞** = −𝑘 (7)
𝑑𝑦

(a)

(b)
Fig. 6. Temperature distributions at vertical section of (a) PreCase 3 and (b) PreCase 4 at
simulation time 47.1s

14
 (a) (b)
Fig. 7. Temperature profiles at the outlet cross section of (a) PreCase 3 and (b) PreCase 4 at
simulation time 47.1s

The results for the heat flux of PreCase 3 and PreCase 4 are shown in Table 5. Currently

PHASTA code is more appropriate to be used in the CHT case whose solid material has the same

value of the 𝜌𝐶/ product with the fluid. For the future work, more effort will be given to expand

the CHT capability of PHASTA code to be applied to various solid material properties.

Table 5. Heat flux calculation based on the Fig. 7 results of PreCase 3&4
Heat flux/ (W/m& ) In the wall near wall (in the fluid)
PreCase 3 951.13 980.85
PreCase 4 1016.93 3113.64

15
 CHAPTER 4. Simulation Setup

With the validation effort discussed in CHAPTER 3, the simulation cases are set to

demonstrate the heat transfer capability of PHASTA code for the T-junction thermal mixing. The

simulation cases contain the cases with the adiabatic thermal boundary which the heat flux through

the boundary is set to zero, and the cases with the CHT in which solid wall is built based the data

from the Vattenfall experiment and the heat transfer in the fluid is fully coupled with heat

conduction in the solid walls. The outside of the walls is adiabatic.

Two different mesh designs are applied in adiabatic cases. The coarser mesh under-resolves

the flow and studied as the initial step of the T-junction thermal mixing simulations, and the

comparison between the results of two mesh designs can also help to understand the influence of

the mesh resolution on the result. The second mesh with refined resolution can get much more

accurate simulation data. The comparison between the simulation results and experimental data

demonstrates the predictive capability of the simulation approach.

CHT cases are tested with two models. Considering to fully solve the flow, the boundary

layers have to satisfy the LES requirement. However, limited by the current mesh generation

capability, the solid and fluid regions have to be separate to set the required boundary layer mesh

structure for the fluid and solid regions. Thus, a pipe case with coarse mesh and another case of

parallel plates (forming T-junction geometry) with refined mesh are set.

4.1 Adiabatic case setup

Adiabatic cases are test prior to the CHT cases. Heat conduction in the solid is not involved

in the adiabatic cases, and zero heat flux is applied as thermal boundary conditions at all wall

boundaries. Although adiabatic condition is not the physical condition of the Vattenfall experiment

[2], the heat loss from water is not considered as important due to the low heat conductivity of the

16
pipe material. Thus, based on the previous research [3][4][5][6], adiabatic condition can achieve

good agreement with the experiment. The objective of the adiabatic case is to validate the heat

transfer capabilities of the PHASTA code with complex flows.

4.1.1 Under-resolved case

Because of the large domain size and high Reynolds number, under-resolved cases were

tested prior to the refined case to have a basic understanding to the T-junction thermal mixing. To

compare with the experimental data, the model geometry shown in Fig. 8 is set to be the same as

the Vattenfall experiment facility size. The main inlet temperature is 292.15K and branch inlet

temperature is 309.15K. The uniform velocities are applied to the inlets, which for main inlet is

0.584 m/s and for branch inlet is 0.764 m/s, respectively. Due to single-fluid limitation, the fluid

properties of the outlet temperature which is approximately 27.5ºC shown in Table 6 are applied

to the case based on the material properties table provided by the Älvkarleby Laboratory [2]. Two

cases with different viscosities were tested to observe the influence of the viscosity on the flow

and also control the computational cost. Case 1 with a larger viscosity (0.003 Pa ∙ s) would be run

first to reach the steady state and Case 2 with the physical viscosity (0.0008693 Pa ∙ s) could

utilize the data of Case 1, which would save the simulation time cost to reach steady state.

Fig. 8. Vattenfall T-junction experimental test section reproduced for simulations shown with
computational mesh (unit: mm) [2]

17
 Table 6. Fluid properties [2]
parameter Main inlet pipe Branch inlet pipe
Temperature /℃ 19 37
Diameter /m 0.14 0.1
'
Density /(kg/m ) 996.79
Heat capacity /(kJ/kg ∙ K) 4.18
Thermal conductivity /(W/m ∙ K) 0.6
Velocity /(m/s) 0.584 0.764
Case 1:Re (µ = 0.003 Pa ∙ s) 27165 25385
Case 2:Re (µ = 0.0008693 Pa ∙ s) 93751 87600

The boundary layer mesh is only applied in the region from inlet to 0.72m to prevent the

backflow. For the under-resolved cases, there are 10 layers of boundary mesh shown in Fig. 9. The

thickness of the first boundary layer mesh is 1.6 × 10(. m. The boundary layer mesh growth factor

was chosen to be 1.44 and the total thickness is 0.0135m.

(a) (b)
Fig. 9. The boundary layer mesh design of the under-resolved case (a) the overall mesh of the
cross-section within the most refined region; (b) zoom into the boundary layer region

18
 To prevent the backflow and divergency, the outlet section is elongated from 0.72m up to

1.22m and applied with coarse mesh. The mesh transitions are also developed to reduce numerical

error induced by the difference between the bulk mesh and outlet mesh. The mesh of the transition

region is shown in Fig. 10 and the mesh resolution along the streamwise direction is presented in

Table 7. The total number of tetrahedral elements is 5,721,545 and the number of nodes is 995,851.

Fig. 10. The mesh transition near the outlet of the under-resolved case

Table 7. Mesh resolutions of Case 1&2 along the streamwise direction

Streamwise location -1.22 (inlet) to 0.82 0.82 to 1.02 1.02 to 1.12 1.12 to 1.22 (outlet)
Mesh resolution 8.75E-03 1.75E-02 3.5E-02 7.0E-02

In order to study the refinement of the mesh, ∆y 0 of both the bulk and boundary mesh were

calculated using the following equation:

𝜌𝑢1 ∆𝑦 (8)
∆𝑦 0 =
𝜇

where 𝜌 is the density of the fluid, μ is the fluid viscosity, y is the distance to the wall, and 𝑢1 is

friction velocity:

𝜏2
𝑢1 = h (9)
𝜌

19
where τ3 represents wall shear stress and given the pipe flow it could be obtained by:

∆𝑃𝐴, 𝑓 𝜌𝑢& (10)

𝜏2 = =
𝑃2 4 2

and the friction factor f could be calculated by Colebrook Formula [30]:

1 2.51 1 𝜖 (11)
= −2.00 𝑙𝑜𝑔45 m + p
k𝑓 𝑅𝑒k𝑓 3.7 𝐷

where for the smooth pipe, the roughness ϵ = 0. Given the Reynolds number and friction factor

could be solved iteratively. The estimated friction factors and ∆y 0 at three sections for both Case

1 and Case 2 are shown in Table 8. The ∆y 0 values indicate that the flow in Case 1 is well-resolved

near the wall region while in the bulk region it’s under-resolved, and the flow in Case 2 is under-

resolved for both boundary and bulk mesh.

Table 8. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 0 Value of sections in Case 1&2

Section Main inlet Branch inlet Outlet
Mean velocity / (m/s) 0.584 0.764 0.974
Friction factor 0.02404 0.02443 0.02136
0
Case 1 Wall ∆y 1.70 2.24 2.68
0
Bulk ∆y 93.07 122.74 146.32
Friction factor 0.01823 0.01850 0.01642
0
Case 2 Wall ∆y 5.11 6.74 8.10
0
Bulk ∆y 279.71 368.62 442.73

Since the accurate velocity distributions of the simulation results are required to compare

with the experiment results, at the two downstream locations z/D=1.6 and z/D=4.6 (D is the

diameter of outlet section), 3073 virtual probes shown in Fig. 11 were put at either cross-section

to record flow data. The distance of the outset probes to the wall is 2.75 × 10() m which is less

than the thickness of first boundary layer, 1.6 × 10(. m, thus, the whole cross-section is covered

by the virtual probes.

20
 8.00E-02

6.00E-02

4.00E-02

2.00E-02

0.00E+00
-8.00E-02 -6.00E-02 -4.00E-02 -2.00E-02 0.00E+00 2.00E-02 4.00E-02 6.00E-02 8.00E-02

-2.00E-02

-4.00E-02

-6.00E-02

-8.00E-02

Fig. 11. the virtual probe distribution at the cross-section

4.1.2 Refined case

To get more accurate results and compare with the experimental data, well-resolved cases

were tested. Considering that the computational cost would be extremely large using the

experiment model geometry shown in Fig. 8, a model with shortened inlets was created and shown

in Fig. 12. The outlet region is also elongated to prevent the backflow. To guarantee that the

turbulent flow is fully developed in the shortened inlets, 1/7th power law is used as inlet velocity

profiles:

𝑢 𝑟 4/9
= s1 − u (12)
𝑈67, 𝑅

where U:;< is the maximum velocity and R is the radius of pipe. A validation case, Case 3, was

generated first to test the influence of the shortened pipe length with 1/7th power law on the

turbulent flow velocity development. Case 3 has the same mesh design with Case 1, including

boundary layers and bulk mesh resolutions shown in Table 9. The fluid properties and boundary

conditions are also identical with Case 1.

21
 Fig. 12. Model size of shortened inlets with mesh (unit: mm)

Table 9. Mesh resolutions of Case 3along the streamwise direction

Streamwise location / m [-0.61 (inlet), 0.82] [0.82, 1.02] [1.02, 1.12] [1.12, 1.22 (outlet)]
Mesh resolution 8.75E-03 1.75E-02 3.5E-02 7.0E-02

After reaching the steady state, the velocity distributions of Case 3 were recorded by the

same group of virtual probes shown in Fig. 11 to be compared with the distributions of Case 1.

The visible velocity distributions at two locations, z/D=1.6 and z/D=4.6, of both cases are shown

in Fig. 13. The result comparison between Case 1 and Case 3 is shown in Fig. 14, which indicate

that with 1/7th power law, the turbulent flow in Case 3 is fully developed and the shortened inlet

pipe length has little effect on the results.

Based on the results of the validation case, two well-resolved cases with different

viscosities were developed, which are similar to the under-resolved cases. Case 4 is built with a

larger viscosity (0.003 Pa ∙ s) and Case 5 with the physical viscosity (0.0008693 Pa ∙ s).

The boundary layer mesh is only applied in the region from inlet to 0.72m to prevent the

backflow. For the well-resolved cases, there are 10 layers of boundary mesh shown in Fig. 15. The

thickness of the first boundary layer mesh is 4.5 × 10() m. The boundary layer mesh growth factor

was chosen to be 1.4 and the total thickness is 0.00314m.

22
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 13. Velocity distribution of Case 1 at (a) z/D=1.6 and (b) z/D=4.6; of Case 3 at (c) z/D=1.6
and (d) z/D=4.6

1.5 1.5 Case 1

Case 3
v z /v(bulk)

v z /v(bulk)

1 1

0.5 0.5
Case 1
Case 3

0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x/R y/R
(a) (b)
1.5 1.5
v z /v(bulk)

v z /v(bulk)

1 1

0.5 0.5
Case 1 Case 1
Case 3 Case 3
0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x/R y/R
(c) (d)
Fig. 14. Streamwise velocity profiles comparison of Case 1 and Case 3 at z/D=1.6 along (a) x
axis and (b) y axis; at z/D=4.6 along (c) x axis and (d) y axis

23
 (a) (b)
Fig. 15. The boundary layer mesh design of the well-resolved case (a) overall mesh of cross-
section within the most refined region; (b) zoom into the boundary layer region

More refined mesh presented in Table 10 is used to fully resolve the flow. The mesh

transitions shown in Fig. 16 are also applied to reduce numerical error induced by the difference

between the bulk mesh and outlet mesh. The total number of tetrahedral elements is 12,704,554

and the number of nodes is 2,205,319.

Table 10. Mesh resolutions of Case 4&5 along the streamwise direction
Streamwise [-0.10, 0.30] [-0.61, 0.72] [0.72, 0.82] [0.82, 1.02] [1.02, 1.12] [1.12, 1.22]
location / m
Mesh 2.5E-03 5.0E-03 1.0E-02 2.0E-02 4.0E-02 8.0E-02
resolution

Fig. 16. Mesh transition near the outlet of the well-resolved case

24
 In order to study the refinement of the mesh, ∆y 0 of both the bulk and boundary mesh were

calculated based on Equation (8)(9)(10) and (11). The estimated friction factors and ∆y 0 at three

sections for both Case 4 and Case 5 are shown in Table 11. The ∆y 0 values indicate that the flow

in Case 4 is well-resolved, and the flow in Case 5 is a little under-resolved in the bulk region.

Table 11. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 0 Value of sections in Case 4&5
Section Main inlet Branch inlet Outlet
Mean velocity / (m/s) 0.584 0.764 0.974
Friction factor 0.02404 0.02443 0.02136
Case 4 Wall ∆y 0 0.48 0.63 0.75
0
Bulk ∆y 26.59 35.07 41.81
Friction factor 0.01823 0.01850 0.01642
Case 5 Wall ∆y 0 1.44 1.90 2.28
0
Bulk ∆y 79.92 105.32 126.50

Virtual probes shown in Fig. 11 were put at either cross-section to record flow data. The

distance of the outset probes to the wall is 2.75 × 10() m which is less than the thickness of first

boundary layer, 4.5 × 10() m, thus, the whole cross-section is covered by the virtual probes.

4.2 Conjugate heat transfer case

Conjugate heat transfer (CHT) capabilities in the T-junction thermal mixing simulation are

then tested. Wall will be generated, the heat conduction in the solid and the heat convection

between the flow and solid are coupled and induced into simulations. The objective of CHT

simulations is not only to validate the CHT capabilities of PHASTA code, but also to demonstrate

the influence of the CHT procedure to the T-junction thermal mixing results.

4.2.1 CHT under-resolved case model setup

To validate whether CHT code could work for T-junction pipe, Case 6 shown in Fig. 17 with

coarse mesh was performed. According to the T-junction thermal mixing experiment [2], a wall

25
region with the thickness of 10mm is generated for the domain except the region near the outlet.

Ambient temperature (≈ 15℃) is set for the wall boundary conditions and the fluid properties are

the same as the Case 2 and Case 5. The physical properties of 304 stainless steel under room

temperature is used as the parameters of the wall shown in Table 12. The wall region is covered

by the 4 uniform boundary layers whose thickness is 2.5mm and the bulk resolution is 10mm. The

number of tetrahedral elements is 403,609.

Fig. 17. Case 6 with mesh generated for CHT code validation

Table 12. The properties of the wall

Density/ (𝑘𝑔/𝑚' ) Specific heat/ (𝐽/(𝑘𝑔 ∙ 𝐾)) Thermal conductivity/ (𝑊/(𝑚 ∙ 𝐾))
7910.86 510.0 15.5

The transient temperature and velocity magnitude distributions are shown in Fig. 18. The

velocity distribution in the wall region is kept being zero, which indicates that CHT code works

well on the velocity. With respect to temperature distribution, the temperature profiles in the

midplane at location y=0.15 and z=-0.4 are presented in Fig. 19. It is observed that the left side of

the branch inlet has lower temperature than the right side and the top side of the main inlet has

higher temperature than the bottom. The phenomenon is due to the heat conduction in the wall,

which transfer the heat from the hot leg to the cold one.

26
 (a) (b)
Fig. 18. The transient (a) temperature and (b) velocity magnitude distributions of Case 6

(a) (b)
Fig. 19. The temperature profile in the midplane at (a) y=0.15; (b) z=-0.4

4.2.2 CHT resolved case setup

To fully solve both the wall and fluid domain, it is necessary to set the boundary layer meshes

for wall and fluid appropriately. The thickness of the wall is 0.01mm while the well-resolved

boundary layers for the flow based on LES requirement need the thickness of first boundary layer

mesh in the fluid domain to be approximate 4.5 × 10() m. It indicates that the boundary layer

meshes for the two regions have to be separated while the current mesh generation executable file

only enables one design of boundary layers for each surface. Therefore, a gap is inserted to separate

the regions as shown in Fig. 20. The periodic condition is applied on the two faces of the gap to

27
connect the temperature across the gap. Based on this innovative model design, parallel plates are

chosen to replace the original pipe case.

solid
gap periodic
fluid condition

Fig. 20. the schematic of the innovative model with gap applied with periodic condition

The model schematic with mesh of Case 7 shown in Fig. 21 was created. The depth of the

model is 50mm. Outlet section is also elongated to prevent backflow. Considering the result

comparison, the Reynolds number of the case is set to be the same as the experiment. Since the

hydraulic diameter of the parallel plates is 2D where D is the distance between two parallel plates,

the distances between parallel plates of main inlet and branch inlet are set to be half of diameter of

main and branch inlets in the experiment.

The boundary layers are only applied in the region from inlet to 0.72m to prevent the

backflow. The thickness of the first boundary layer mesh is 4.5 × 10() m. The boundary layer

mesh growth factor is 1.4 and the total thickness is 0.00314m. Bulk mesh resolution are shown in

Table 13. The total number of tetrahedral elements is 4,496,458.

28
 Fig. 21. CHT parallel plate case with mesh (unit: mm)

Table 13. Mesh resolutions of Case 7 along the main inlet streamwise (z axis) and branch inlet
streamwise (y axis) directions
z axis location / m [-0.10, 0.30] [-0.61, 0.72] [0.72, 0.82] [0.82, 1.02] [1.02, 1.22]
y axis location / m [-0.045, 0.055] [0.055, 0.25] [0.25, 0.328] ---------- ----------
Mesh resolution 2.5E-03 5.0E-03 1.0E-02 2.0E-02 4.0E-02

To separate the solid and fluid region, five thin gaps which has the thickness of 0.01mm

are inserted into the locations of interfaces. At the upper corners the two conjunction parts are

utilized to connect the solid and fluid regions as shown in Fig. 22 to keep one integral part. Periodic

condition is set for each couple of surfaces in a gap to transfer the heat across the gaps to get

continuous temperature profiles. The gaps with periodic conditions are only able to be created for

parallel plate case since the areas of faces applied with periodic conditions is strictly required to

be the same.

In order to study the refinement of the mesh, ∆y 0 of both the bulk and boundary mesh were

calculated based on Equations (8) - (11). The estimated friction factors and ∆y 0 at three sections

for Case 7 are shown in Table 14. The ∆y 0 values indicate that the flow in Case 7 is a little under-

resolved in the bulk region.

29
 Fig. 22. The model schematic at the junction upper corners

Table 14. Friction factor and Corresponding ∆𝑦 0 Value of sections in Case 7

Section Main inlet Branch inlet Outlet
Mean velocity / (m/s) 0.584 0.764 0.974
Friction factor 0.01823 0.01850 0.01642
0
Case 7 Wall ∆y 1.44 1.90 2.28
0
Bulk ∆y 79.92 105.32 126.50

30
 CHAPTER 5. Results and Discussion

Summary tables, Table 15 and Table 16, for both the adiabatic cases and CHT cases are

shown as described in CHAPTER 4. Case 1 and Case 2 are tested prior to the Case 4 and Case 5

to have an initial step for the T-junction thermal mixing simulation. To reduce the computational

cost, model with shortened inlet lengths is developed. Case 3 is compared with Case 1 to

demonstrate that the shortened inlet lengths have little influence on the downstream results. Then

Case 4 and Case 5 are studied to validate that the PHASTA code has the good heat transfer

capability. CHT cases are then studies to compare the effect of the heat conduction in the solid to

the T-junction thermal mixing. Case 6 is present to have a verification of the performance of CHT.

Then Case 7 is developed to evaluate the effect of CHT module to the T-junction thermal mixing

behavior.

Table 15. Summary table for adiabatic cases

# Case Model size First Boundary layer mesh height Bulk mesh resolution viscosity
Case 1 Normal 1.6 × 10(. 𝑚 8.75 × 10(' 𝑚 0.003
Case 2 Normal 1.6 × 10(. 𝑚 8.75 × 10(' 𝑚 0.0008693
(.
Case 3 Shortened 1.6 × 10 𝑚 8.75 × 10(' 𝑚 0.003
Case 4 Shortened 4.5 × 10() 𝑚 2.5 × 10(' 𝑚 0.003
Case 5 Shortened 4.5 × 10() 𝑚 2.5 × 10(' 𝑚 0.0008693

Table 16. Summary table for CHT cases

# Case Model geometry First Boundary layer mesh height Bulk mesh resolution
Case 6 T-junction pipe 2.5 × 10(' 𝑚 1.0 × 10(& 𝑚
Case 7 T-junction parallel plates 4.5 × 10() 𝑚 2.5 × 10(' 𝑚

5.1 Adiabatic case result analysis

Since simulation data is recorded by the virtual probes, described in section 4.1.1, a three-

window comparison method is used to decide whether the simulations the statistical steady-state.

31
The method compares the data of the adjacent time period to observe if the simulation data will

converge. Examples of the unsteady-state and steady-state simulations are shown in the Fig. 23.

1.6

1.4

1.2

0.8
vz

0.6

0.4

15500-15900
0.2
15900-16300
16300-16700
0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
(a)
x/R

1.4

1.2

0.8

0.6

0.4

3.920-4.917 s
0.2 4.917-5.907 s
5.907-6.826 s

0
-0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

(b)
Fig. 23. (a) Unsteady-state and (b) Steady-state examples of three-window method used to
determine the simulation state

32
5.1.1 Results of the under-resolved cases

Once T-junction thermal mixing simulation was fully developed and reached statistical

steady state, the mean results were obtained by averaging the data in 1.76 seconds simulation time.

The simulation cost around 60 wall clock hours for either case (while running on 128 computing

cores). Fig. 24 shows the average temperature streamwise velocity fields for Case 1 and Case 2.

There is a kidney-shape recirculation region near corner due to the effect of the hot side flow as

predicted by C. Walker et al [31].

The averaged streamwise velocity fields for Case 1 and Case 2 of cross sections 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6

and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 are shown in Fig. 25. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6, the velocity fields show that the side

flow has significant effect that near the end of the recirculation zone the flow is pushed down to

the bottom so that the velocity near the top wall is much less than the one near the bottom, while

at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6, the effect is much slighter, and the dissipation of the effect can be observed.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 24. Average (a) temperature and (b) streamwise velocity fields of Case 1; average (c)
temperature and (b) streamwise velocity distributions of Case 2.

33
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 25. Average streamwise velocity fields for (a) Case 1 (b) Case 2 at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and
for (c) Case 1 (d) Case 2 at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6.

The recirculation zone causes the two-peak characteristic of the streamwise velocity

distribution along x axis and uneven distribution along y axis as the streamwise velocity profiles

shown in Fig. 26. Since the cross-section at 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 is closer to the sharp edge and in the

recirculation zone, the streamwise velocity profile along x axis has obvious two-peak feature,

while at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 the streamwise velocity profile is much flatter due to the dissipation

of the side flow effect. Besides, the streamwise velocity profiles along y axis also show the effect

of the side flow. In Fig. 26, the results of Case 1 and Case 2 are compared with experimental data.

At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6, the velocity profiles of Case 2 show the same feature as the experimental

34
data, but there is reasonable error since the flow is under resolved. However, at location 𝑧/𝐷 =

4.6 especially for the velocity profile along x axis, the results of both cases miss the two-peak

feature.

1.6
1.5
1.4

1.2

1 1

v z /v(bulk)
v z /v(bulk)

0.8

0.6
0.5
0.4 Case 1
Case 1
Case 2 Case 2
0.2 Experiment
Experiment
0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x/R x/R
(a) (b)

1.5 Case 1 1.5

Case 2
Experiment

1 1
v z /v(bulk)
v z /v(bulk)

0.5 0.5
Case 1
Case 2
Experiment
0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
y/R y/R
(c) (d)
Fig. 26. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 1 and Case 2 at location (a) z/D=1.6 and
(b) z/D=4.6 along x axis; at cross-section location (c) z/D=1.6 and (d) z/D=4.6 along y axis

Based on the results of the under-resolved cases, the capability of predicting the flow

behaviors in T-junction thermal mixing were demonstrated and the simulation results show good

agreement with the experimental data given the computational cost limitation. Thus, further

validation based on the well resolved cases are completed based on the results.

35
5.1.2 Well-resolved case

Since the result comparison between Case 3 and Case 1 discussed in section 4.1.2 has

shown that the shortened pipe has negligible influence on the results, the simulations of Case 4

and Case 5 (simulation setup is described in section 4.1.2) were performed. The simulation data is

recorded by the virtual probes once the cases reach the steady state. The simulation of Case 4 costs

approximately 100 wall clock hours and of Case5 costs 80 wall clock hours (while running on 192

computing cores).

The streamwise velocity fields of cross sections at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6

of both Case 4 and Case 5 are shown in Fig. 27. Compared with the velocity fields shown in Fig.

25, it is observed that the velocity difference on the same cross section is greater since the flow is

better resolved. Two-peak feature at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 is also presented in Fig. 27 (c) (d).

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 27. The streamwise velocity fields of (a) Case 4 and (b) Case 5 at location z/D=1.6 and (c)
Case 4 and (d) Case 5 at location z/D=4.6.

36
 The streamwise velocity profiles of Case 4 and Case 5 at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 =

4.6 along x and y axis are shown in Fig. 28. Compared with the experimental data, the results of

Case 5 show the same two-peak feature of the streamwise velocity along x axis at the two locations.

The streamwise velocity profiles of Case 5 along both x and y axes agree well with the

experimental data and demonstrate the good capability of the PHASTA code to predict the

turbulent flow mixing behaviors in the T-junction simulation.

1.6
1.5
1.4

1.2

1 1

v z /v(bulk)
v z /v(bulk)

0.8

0.6
0.5
0.4 Case 4
Case 4 Case 5
0.2 Case 5 Experiment
Experiment
0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x/R x/R
(a) (b)
1.6
1.5 Case 4
Case 5 1.4
Experiment
1.2

1
v z /v(bulk)

1
v z /v(bulk)

0.8

0.6
0.5
0.4 Case 4
Case 5
0.2 Experiment

0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x/R y/R

(c) (d)
Fig. 28. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 4 and Case 5 at location (a) z/D=1.6 and
(b) z/D=4.6 along x axis; at cross-section location (c) z/D=1.6 and (d) z/D=4.6 along y axis

37
 The temperature result comparisons between the simulations and experiments are shown

in Fig. 29. Normalized temperature is defined by,

𝑇 − 𝑇>?@A
𝑇∗ = (13)
𝑇%?$ − 𝑇>?@A

where T represents the temperature of fluid, 𝑇%?$ is the temperature of the hot inflow and 𝑇>?@A is

of the cold inflow. In the Vattenfall T-junction thermal mixing experiment, the temperatures are

obtained by thermocouples in the flow located 1 mm from the wall of four directions, top, right,

left and bottom. In Fig. 29, it can be observed that at the locations close to the center, the

normalized temperatures are well predicted and have good agreements with the experimental data,

while at the locations that close to the outlet, the temperatures at the bottom, left and right walls

are underpredicted and the temperature at the top wall is overpredicted. It indicates that the thermal

mixing predicted by the PHASTA code need longer distance to be completed.

Therefore, based on the comparison of both the velocity and temperature profiles between

the simulations and experiments, in which velocity profiles have good agreements with the

experimental data and capture the features shown in the experiments, temperature profiles show

the small difference at the locations near the outlet, an assumption is given that introducing CHT

into the simulation may help to enhance the heat transfer since with the CHT the heat conduction

in the solid can enhance the thermal mixing process.

38
 1
Case 5 0.5 Case 5
Experiment Experiment
0.9
0.4
0.8
0.3

T*
T*

0.7
0.2
0.6
0.1
0.5
0
0.4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
z/D z/D
(a) (b)

0.5 Case 5 0.5 Case 5

Experiment Experiment

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3
T*

T*

0.2 0.2

0.1 0.1

0 0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
z/D z/D
(c) (d)
Fig. 29. Temperature comparisons between the results of Case 5 and experiment data at (a) top,
(b) bottom, (c) left and (d) right walls along streamwise directions

5.2 CHT case results analysis

The objective of CHT tests is to demonstrate the effect of the heat conduction procedure in

the solid to the temperature fluctuations and the result accuracy of the simulations. Fourier

transform approach is used to get the amplitude and frequency of the temperatures recorded by

probes.

5.2.1 CHT under-resolved case

The results of Case 6 are analyzed to test the CHT results based on the under-resolved flow.

It took 6 wall clock hours (while running on 64 computing cores) for Case 6 to reach the statistical

39
steady state and collect data. Fig. 30 shows the average temperature and velocity fields of vertical

section in Case 6. The recirculation zone presented in Case 6 indicates that the simulation with

CHT has the expected feature of the temperature and velocity profiles observed in the experiment.

The zero-velocity region generated for the solid demonstrated that CHT code has successfully set

the zero velocity for the solid element. The average temperature fields of cross-sections at locations

𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 are shown in Fig. 31 and the corresponding temperature profiles

along x and y axis are presented in Fig. 32. The temperature profiles presented that for the solid

element, there is linear relationship between the temperature and the distance to wall, which

demonstrate the heat conduction process in the solid region.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 30. Average (a) temperature and (b) velocity fields of vertical section in Case 6

40
 (a) (b)
Fig. 31. Average temperature fields of cross sections at (a) 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and (b) 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6

306

z=1.6D
304 z=4.6D
302

300
temperature/K

298

296

294

292

290

288
-0.08 -0.06 -0.04 -0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08
y/m

Fig. 32. Average temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 along y axis

Since the objective to study the flow behavior of T-junction thermal mixing is to simulate

the thermal stress which may cause thermal fatigue, Fourier transform is used to get the

temperature spectrum with frequency and amplitude of the temperature profiles based on the

simulation time recorded. the temperature over simulation time and the corresponding temperature

spectrum of top, bottom, left and right wall at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4 are shown in Fig.

33 and Fig. 34, respectively.

41
 10 0

-5
10

Amplitude
10 -10

0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
Frequency(Hz)

(a) (b)
0
10

-5
10

Amplitude
-10
10

0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
Frequency(Hz)

(c) (d)
0
10

-5
10
Amplitude

-10
10

0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
Frequency(Hz)

(e) (f)
0
10

10 -5
Amplitude

-10
10

10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
Frequency(Hz)
(g) (h)
Fig. 33. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2, the temperature file over time of the (a) top, (c) bottom, (e) left
and (g)right wall and the corresponding temperature spectrum (b)(d)(f)(h)

42
 10 0

10 -5

Amplitude
10 -10

10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
Frequency(Hz)
(a) (b)
0
10

-5
10

Amplitude
-10
10

0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
Frequency(Hz)

(c) (d)
0
10

10 -5
Amplitude

10 -10

10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
Frequency(Hz)
(e) (f)
0
10

10 -5
Amplitude

10 -10

10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
Frequency(Hz)
(g) (h)
Fig. 34. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4, the temperature file over time of the (a) top, (c) bottom, (e) left
and (g)right wall and the corresponding temperature spectrum (b)(d)(f)(h)

43
 The Fourier transforms of the experiment temperature spectrum show a distinct peak at

around 3.5 Hz at the left and right walls of both two locations, while the temperature spectrums of

the top and bottom don’t show the peak [2]. The temperature spectrums in Fig. 33 and Fig. 34

shows that for the left and right wall at 𝑧/𝐷 = 2 and the right wall at 𝑧/𝐷 = 4 has the peak near

3-10 Hz and the difference between the simulation results and experimental data is acceptable due

to under-resolved mesh resolution of Case 6.

5.2.2 CHT parallel plate case

The results of CHT parallel plate case, Case 7, are studied based on the effort of Case 6.

The Reynolds number of Case 7 is set to be the same as the Case 6 and Case 7, while due to the

transformation of the geometry, the phenomenon shown in the Case 7 would has the difference

with the experiment. Once Case 7 reached the statistical steady state, the results are recorded. It

took approximately 90 wall clock hours (while running on 128 computing cores).

The averaged velocity and temperature fields of vertical section are shown in Fig. 35 and

of cross section at 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 are shown in Fig. 36 and Fig. 37, respectively. It

can be observed that the recirculation zone still exists in the parallel plate case, while the shape of

the recirculation zone is different from the one in the pipe as shown in Fig. 24 and Fig. 25. The

explanation is that in the pipe, the recirculation zone is influenced by the effect of the existence of

the wall at the right and left side, while in parallel plate, since the back and front surface is set to

be the periodic conditions, there is no effect from the side wall.

44
 (a)

(b)
Fig. 35. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of vertical section in Case 7

(a) (b)
Fig. 36. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of cross section at 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6
in Case 7

45
 (a) (b)
Fig. 37. Average (a) streamwise velocity and (b) temperature fields of cross section at 𝑧/𝐷 =
4.6 in Case 7

Therefore, only the comparison of velocity profiles between the results of Case 7 and

experimental data along y axis are completed, and the comparison of temperature focus on the top

and bottom wall. The streamwise velocity profiles along y axis at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 =

4.6 are presented in Fig. 38, and the comparison between the experimental data is also shown. In

Fig. 38, the streamwise velocity profiles at both locations have the same feature with the

experimental data, while the difference between values is obvious due to the transformed shape of

the recirculation zone. The average temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6

along y axis are shown in Fig. 39 and the linear ship can be observed in the solid. In the top wall,

the temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 are higher than the profiles at 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 since

heat is conducted from the hot inlet to the outlet, while in the bottom wall, the temperature profiles

at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 are lower than the profiles at 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 since heat is conducted from the

outlet to the cold inlet. The simulation results perform the good capability of the PHASTA code

working on the CHT.

46
 1.6 1.6
Case 7 Case 7
1.4 experiment 1.4
experiment
1.2 1.2

1 1
v z /v(bulk)

v z /v(bulk)
0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
y/R y/R
(a) (b)
Fig. 38. Average streamwise velocity profiles of Case 7 along y axis at location (a) z/D = 1.6 and
(b) z/D = 4.6

302

300

298
temperature/K

296

294

292
z=1.6D
290 z=4.6D

-0.04 -0.02 0 0.02 0.04

y/m
Fig. 39. Average temperature profiles at locations 𝑧/𝐷 = 1.6 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4.6 along y axis

The temperature profile along the streamwise direction at the top wall is presented in Fig.

40 and has the good agreement with the experimental data. Fourier transform is used to get the

temperature spectrum with frequency and amplitude of the temperature profiles based on the

simulation time. The temperature profiles over simulation time and the corresponding temperature

spectrum of top and bottom wall at location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2 and 𝑧/𝐷 = 4 are shown in Fig. 41 and Fig.

42, respectively. The temperature spectrums in Fig. 41 and Fig. 42 have no obvious peak, which

47
agrees with the experiment result analysis that the temperature spectrums of the point located on

the top and bottom wall show no peak.

1
Case 7
Experiment
0.9

T* 0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
z/m
Fig. 40. Average temperature profile of top wall along the streamwise direction in Case 7

303
10 0
302

301
temperature/K

300
Amplitude

299
10 -5
298

297

296

295 10 -10
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
time step
Frequency(Hz)
(a) (b)
306
10 0
304

302
temperature/K

Amplitude

300

298 10 -5

296

294

292 10 -10
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
time step
Frequency(Hz)
(c) (d)
Fig. 41. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 2, the temperature profiles over time of the (a) top and (c) bottom
wall and the corresponding temperature spectrums (b)(d)

48
 303
0
10
302

301
temperature/K

Amplitude
300
10 -5

299

298

297 -10
10
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
time step
Frequency(Hz)
(a) (b)
302
10 0
301

300
temperature/K

Amplitude
299

298
10 -5

297

296

295 10 -10
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3
time step
Frequency(Hz)
(c) (d)
Fig. 42. At location 𝑧/𝐷 = 4, the temperature profiles over time of the (a) top and (c) bottom
wall and the corresponding temperature spectrums (b)(d)
5.3 Error analysis

In the comparisons mentioned in section 5.1 and 5.2, the profiles of experimental data and

simulation results are presented to observe the agreement between two set of data. However, since

in the experiment, the averaged results are usually companied with the uncertainty induced by the

measurement. To quantify the error between the experimental data and simulation result, an error

analysis method is developed.

Since the experimental data is given with the uncertainty, a range of convinced

experimental data can be obtained. Thus, to quantify the error between the experimental data and

simulation result, simulation results could also be given as a range of convinced data to overlap

with the experimental data, and overlapped area with the areas of simulation and experiment results

49
can represent the agreement of the simulation. Since the experiment uncertainty area is obtained

by the averaged experiment results and the uncertainty, to get the simulation uncertainty area,

simulation fluctuation is used to imitate the uncertainty.

A test was developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Considering the

laminal flow in a pipe, which has the mean velocity of 2 m/s and the radius of the pipe is 1 m, the

analytical velocity profile is given as 𝑢 = 2 × (1 − 𝑟 & ). To imitate the error analysis for the results

of experiments and simulations, the analytical profile is regarded as the result of “experiment”,

and the uncertainty is set as 5% of the velocity value. To imitate the simulation results, a group of

artificial results is generated. The artificial results are randomly produced by standard normal

distribution at each point along the diameter of the pipe based on the analytical result. The

uncertainty of the artificial results is the standard deviation.

Different number of samples of the artificial results are generate and the comparison between

the artificial and analytical results is shown in Fig. 43. Since with more samples, the averaged

result generated by the standard normal distribution is closer to the analytical result, and the

comparisons in Fig. 43 show the same characteristic.

The areas of the analytical, artificial and overlapped for all three comparisons are shown in

Table 17. It could be demonstrated that when the number of samples increases, the overlapped

area is closer to the analytical area, which indicates this error analysis method indeed can obtain

and represent the error of the simulation. Results of Case 5 is chosen as a sample to present the

method as shown in Fig. 44. The uncertainty of the simulation depends on the three-window

described in section 5.1. The maximum and minimum value of the three-window results is

obtained to represent the uncertainty.

50
 2.5

1.5

velocity
1

0.5

0 analytical result
artificial result
-0.5
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
r/R
(a)
2.5

1.5
velocity

0.5

0 analytical result
artificial result
-0.5
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
r/R
(b)
2.5

1.5
velocity

0.5

0 analytical result
artificial result
-0.5
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
r/R
(c)
Fig. 43. The comparison of (a) 10 samples, (b) 100 samples, and (c) 1000 samples of artificial
results and analytical results

51
 Table 17. The areas of the analytical, artificial and overlapped for three comparisons
The number of samples 10 100 1000
Analytical area 0.2665 0.2665 0.2665
Artificial area 0.3940 0.4115 0.4127
Overlapped area 0.2338 0.2610 0.2653

1.6

1.4

1.2

1
v z /v(bulk)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2 simulation result

experiment result
0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
y/R

Fig. 44. The error analysis to the results of Case 5

A measurement index representing the error of based on the experiment area 𝐴+ , simulation

area 𝐴B and overlapped area 𝐴? should be obtained to quantity the quality of the simulation. Three

indexes are tested, including 𝐴? /𝐴+ , 𝐴? /𝐴B , and (𝐴B − 𝐴? )/𝐴+ . The relation between value of

three indexes with the computational cost are presented in Fig. 45. The computational cost is

represented by the time steps used to get the results. With larger computational cost, the simulation

results should be closer to the experiment data, and the overlapped area should increase, and non-

overlapped simulation area should decrease. Based the relationship shown in Fig. 45, (𝐴B −

𝐴? )/𝐴+ is the most appropriate index to quantity the simulation error since it shows the clear
52
feature that with the increasing of computational cost, after the Case 5 reaches the steady state, the

value of (𝐴B − 𝐴? )/𝐴+ will be stable and fluctuate around 0.26, which could be used to represent

the simulation capability of PHASTA code for T-junction thermal mixing.

Overlapped/Experiment
Overlapped/Simulation
2.5 unover(Sim)/Experiment

2
Agreement

1.5

0.5

0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Computational Cost

Fig. 45. The values of three indexes with the computational cost

It can be observed that in Fig. 45, value of (𝐴B − 𝐴? )/𝐴+ starts to fluctuate when time step

is larger than 3000, the corresponding simulation time of approximately 1 second and 1.5 flow

through time, which represent when after reaching the steady-state the simulation time recorded

for data is larger than it the simulation results reach statistical stable. Based on it, the method can

be used for other practical simulations to select the simulation time required for data recording,

which is that the value of (𝐴B − 𝐴? )/𝐴+ could be calculated and plotted over simulation time and

the minimum simulation time required for data analysis is obtained once the value of (𝐴B −

𝐴? )/𝐴+ becomes stable.

53
 CHAPTER 6. Conclusions and Future work

6.1 Conclusions

A study focusing on the heat transfer capability of PHASTA code based on the Vattenfall

T-junction thermal mixing experiment is conducted. The thermal boundary and CHT application

were tested before the T-junction thermal mixing simulations. The issue of the heat flux boundary

calculation was fixed and the tests with both heat flux and constant temperature boundary

conditions performed with good agreement with the analytical results. The energy conservation is

verified. CHT is more appropriate to be used in the case which has the same value of the 𝜌𝐶/

product for solid and fluid.

The simulations were performed for both adiabatic and CHT cases. Adiabatic cases

concentrate on the heat transfer process within the fluid and apply zero heat flux for the boundary

of the fluid, including two different mesh designs. Considering the large size of the model, the

mesh design which has larger ∆y 0 was tested as the initial step of the T-junction thermal mixing

simulations with two different viscosities aiming at studying the effect of the viscosity to the

simulation result. The simulation with physical viscosity could also be developed based on the one

with larger viscosity to save the computational cost. The results of Case 1 and Case 2 have shown

that the velocity profiles have the same features with the experimental data, while due to the under-

resolved flow the difference between the simulation results and experimental data is acceptable.

The well-resolved cases developed based on the results of Case 1 and Case 2. To reduce

the computational cost, the lengths of T-junction inlets are reduced. Case 3 was developed to study

whether the shortened inlet lengths have observable influence on the downstream results and the

comparison between Case 1 and Case 3 shows negligible difference. Then Case 4 and Case 5 with

different viscosities of the refined mesh design which satisfies the LES requirements are performed.

54
The simulation results of Case 5 have good agreement of mean velocity profiles with the

experiment results, and for the most temperature values, the simulation also shows the good

agreement. However, at the location close to the outlet, the temperatures at the bottom, left and

right walls are underpredicted and the temperature at the top wall is overpredicted.

Thus, the next step is to include the CHT capability to evaluate if it can help to get more

accurate temperature prediction in the simulations. Two cases are set for the CHT simulation, a

pipe case with coarse mesh, Case 6, and a parallel plate case with refined mesh, Case 7. Case 6

was studied as an initial step for T-junction thermal mixing simulation with conjugate heat transfer.

The results of temperature profiles of Case 6 present that the heat conduction in the solid works

well. However, limited by the current mesh generation capability, the model had to be transformed

to parallel plates to have different boundary layer mesh designs for the solid and fluid region. Gaps

were inserted to separate the wall and flow and periodic conditions were applied to connect the

temperatures and velocities of two regions, so the velocity and temperature are solved to be

continuous even with the gap. The velocity profiles show the general feature of the experiment

velocity profiles but have differences with the experiment data which is acceptable since the

geometry is not exactly the same. The temperature spectra at the top and bottom wall show the

same feature with the spectra based on the experiment results.

To quantity the error of the simulation, since the experiment results are always obtained

with uncertainty, an error analysis method was introduced. The simulation fluctuations are

regarded as the uncertainty of simulation, and in current case, since the three-window method is

used, the maximum and minimum values obtained from the three-window method is recognized

as the simulation fluctuations. Thus, both the experiment and simulation results are shown with

the statistical average results and uncertainty. The overlapped area between the experiment and

55
simulation results can be obtained, and three indexes based on experiment area 𝐴+ , simulation area

𝐴B and overlapped area 𝐴? are tested over the computational cost. (𝐴B − 𝐴? )/𝐴+ is chosen to be

the most appropriate index to quantity the heat transfer capability of the PHASTA code.

6.2 Future work

The application range of CHT module should be expanded as the future work. Since the

energy conservation issue is observed when the solid has different value of the 𝜌𝐶/ product, there

is an apparent inconsistency in the code formulation when dealing with energy equation. Thus,

when different properties of materials are applied, the heat transfer through the interface is not

calculated correctly. Detailed study of the PHASTA code is required to address this issue in the

future work.

Currently limited by the boundary layer mesh generation capability described in section

4.2.2, mesh in the wall should be relative coarse while the boundary layer mesh is required to be

refined enough to satisfy the LES requirement, the pipe was transformed to the parallel plates.

Although the Reynolds number is set to be the same as the experiment and periodic boundary is

set to connect the two regions to transfer the heat, the geometry transformation has influence on

the results especially for the velocity profile. Mesh design should be improved or consider using

other mesh generation tool which could be adapted for the PHASTA code to generate separate

boundary layer mesh designs for solid and fluid regions.

Further study on the temperature fluctuations in the T-junction thermal mixing will be

developed. The work performed is based on the flow ratio applied in the experiment, while in the

benchmark report, it is mentioned that with different flow ration the peak of the temperature

56
spectrum would also change. Thus, the temperature fluctuations related to the different flow ratio

will be developed in the future work.

To study the thermal stress caused by the temperature fluctuations, Finite Element Method

such as ANSYS and ABUQUS can be utilized to get the influence of the temperature on the

lifetime of the T-junction. A relationship between the temperature fluctuation and the

corresponding thermal stress will be discovered to transfer the results of the computational fluid

dynamic to the computational mechanical engineering analysis.

57
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61
APPENDICES

62
 Appendix A

This appendix describes the modified codes about heat transfer boundary calculated in

PHASTA.

E3B.F: This is the code file where the values of boundary nodes are calculated. In the

subroutine e3bSclr thermal boundary conditions are calculated for the energy equation. Before the

correction, the heat flux boundary condition cannot lead to the correct results since the value flux

is not solved correctly. The modification is made and currently PHASTA has the ability to develop

the heat flux boundary as shown in section 3.3.

if (ibb.eq.6) then
do n = 1, nshlb
nodlcl = lnode(n)
flux(iel) = flux(iel)
+ shape(iel,nodlcl)*BCB(iel,n,ibb)*nsurf
/(datmat(1,1,1)*datmat(1,3,1))
enddo
endif

63
 Appendix B

This appendix contains the code parts related to the CHT modifications implemented in

the PHASTA code.

CHTBLOCK.F: In this subroutine edited by Saini [29], the elements that located in the

solid part are recognized based on its distance of the element to the wall. Once an element is judged

as a solid element, the velocities of the elements will be set to zero.

do i=1,numnp
if(d2wal(i,1) .le. cht_dist)then
if(ibits(iBC(i),3,3) .eq. 0)then
iBC(i) = iBC(i) + 56
BC(i,3:5) = 0.0
endif
endif
enddo

PROCES:F: In this subroutine edited by Saini [29], the wall thickness is read and if the

wall exists, the CHT would be active and the subroutine CHTBLOCK will be called.

if(cht_dist .gt. 0.0d0)then

if(myrank.eq.master)then
write(*,*) "------------------------------"
write(*,*) "Conjugate Heat Transfer Active"
write(*,*) "Convection off near walls: ",cht_dist
write(*,*) "------------------------------"
endif
call chtblock(iBC,BC,y)
endif

64
 GETDIFF.F: In this subroutine first edited by Saini [29] and modified by me, the solid

elements is recognized based on the distance to the wall of the elements, which is calculated by

the distance of each node in the element. The solid properties will be assigned to the element once

it’s recognized as the solid elements. The arraies rho, cp and k store density, specific heat capacity

and thermal conductivity of all the elements.

if(cht_dist .gt. 0.0d0)then

rho = datmat(1,1,1)
cp = datmat(1,3,1)
k_T = datmat(1,4,1)
do i=1,npro
avgdist = 0.0
do j=1,nshl
avgdist = avgdist + abs(dwl(i,j))
enddo
avgdist = avgdist/nshl
if(avgdist .le. cht_dist)then
if(icoat .eq. 1)then
layer = 1
else
do j=1,icoat-1
if(avgdist .ge. coat_dist(j) .and.
& avgdist .lt. coat_dist(j+1))then
layer = j
exit
endif
enddo
endif
rho(i) = coat_rho(layer)
cp(i) = coat_cp(layer)
k_T(i) = coat_k(layer)
endif
enddo
endif

diffus(:) = k_T(:)/(rho(:)*cp(:))

65
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