Heat-transfer scaling at moderate Prandtl numbers in the fully rough regime

In the fully rough regime, proposed models predict a scaling for a roughness heat-transfer coefficient, e.g. the roughness Stanton number St(k )similar to (k+)(-p)Pr(-m )where the exponent values p and m are model dependent, giving diverse predictions. Here, k(+ )is the roughness Reynolds number and Pr is the Prandtl number. To clarify this ambiguity, we conduct direct numerical simulations of forced convection over a three-dimensional sinusoidal surface spanning k(+) = 5.5-111 for Prandtl numbers Pr = 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0. These unprecedented parameter ranges are reached by employing minimal channels, which resolve the roughness sublayer at an affordable cost. We focus on the fully rough phenomenologies, which fall into two groups: p = 1/2 (Owen & Thomson, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 15, issue 3, 1963, pp. 321-334; Yaglom & Kader, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 62, issue 3, 1974, pp. 601-623) and p = 1/4 (Brutsaert, Water Resour. Res., vol. 11, issue 4, 1975b, pp. 543-550). Although we find the mean heat transfer favours the p = 1/4 scaling, the Prandtl-Blasius boundary-layer ideas associated with the Reynolds-Chilton-Colburn analogy that underpin the p = 1/2 can remain an apt description of the flow locally in regions exposed to high shear. Sheltered regions, meanwhile, violate this behaviour and are instead dominated by reversed flow, where no clear correlation between heat and momentum transfer is evident. The overall picture of fully rough heat transfer is then not encapsulated by one singular mechanism or phenomenology, but rather an ensemble of different behaviours locally. The implications of the approach to a Reynolds-analogy-like behaviour locally on bulk measures of the Nusselt and Stanton numbers are also examined, with evidence pointing to the onset of a regime transition at even-higher Reynolds numbers.