TRANSIENT HEAT AND MASS-TRANSFER IN A NATURAL CIRCULATION LOOP

Comprehensive work has been performed by theoretical and numerical methods in order to study the steady state, transient and stability characteristics of a double diffusive natural circulation loop. It was found that the behavior of the flow in the system depends on the initial conditions and on the location of the state in the seven-parameter space of the thermal and saline Rayleigh numbers, Ra(T), Ra(S), the modified Prandtl and Schmidt numbers, Pr, Sc, the dimensionless heat and mass transfer coefficients, H(T), H(S), and the ''aspect ratio'' (between the height and width) of the loop, gamma. Numerical results are presented here, showing the flow in each of the five regions formed in the stability chart. The steady state solutions include convection (constant velocity flow), conduction (no-flow) and periodic with constant amplitude and frequency. Two main new results were obtained: long term periodic oscillations where the amplitude is not symmetric around the conduction solution, and an overshoot of the velocity in transients before reaching the stable convection solutions. In the monotonic instability region of the conduction solution, convection solutions (constant velocity flow) develop, and in the global stability region the flow decays to the conduction solution (no flow), regardless of the initial conditions.