Investigation on convective heat transfer over a rotating disk with discrete pins

A three-dimensional numerical study on the flow and heat transfer characteristics over a rotating disk surface with discrete pins was conducted by the use of RNG k–ε turbulent model. And some experiments were also made for validation. The effects of rotating angular speed and pin configuration on the temperature maps and convective heat transfer characteristics on the rotating surface were analyzed. As the increase of rotating velocity, the impingement of pumping jet on the centre of rotating disk becomes stronger and the transition from laminar to turbulent occurs at the outer radius of rotating disk, which resulting in heat transfer enhancement. The pins on the disk make the pumping action of a rotating disk weaker. Simultaneously, they also act as perturbing elements to the cyclone flow near the rotating disk surface, making the overall heat transfer to be enhanced. The needle pins have higher convective heat transfer capacity than the discrete ring pins with the same extend pin areas.