Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Heat Transfer at Low Prandtl Numbers in Planar Impinging Jets

DNS simulations of planar impinging jets are performed to provide reference data to validate RANS models for low-Prandtl turbulent heat transfer. In that configuration, a hot plane jet is blown from a slot at the top wall of a channel and impinges on the cooler bottom wall. The present DNS simulations are carried out at Re = 40 00 and 5700, based on the jet width and velocity, and for Prdown to 0.01. Two cases are investigated: the case of a laminar uniform jet profile and the case of a fully turbulent inlet profile coming from an auxiliary channel flow simulation running in parallel. The DNS results show how the heat transfer in this configuration evolves from the turbulence-dominated case at Pr = 1 to the molecular diffusion-dominate case at Pr = 0.01. The temperature field at Pr = 0.01 is much smoother than at higher Prandtl number because the much larger heat diffusivity quickly diffuses the temperature fluctuations. The comparison between the laminar and the fully-developed turbulent inflows also show different heat transfer characteristics in the vicinity of the stagnation point, depending on the presence of velocity fluctuations in the bottom-wall boundary layers. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.