Pulsating Flow for Mixing Intensification in a Twisted Curved Pipe

This work concerns the manipulation of a twisted curved-pipe flow for mixing enhancement. Previous works have shown that geometrical perturbations to a curved-pipe flow can increase mixing and heat transfer by chaotic advection. In this work the flow entering the twisted pipe undergoes a pulsatile motion. The flow is studied experimentally and numerically. The numerical study is carried out by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (FLUENT 6) in which a pulsatile velocity field is imposed as an inlet condition. The experimental setup involves principally a “Scotch-yoke” pulsatile generator and a twisted curved pipe. Laser Doppler velocimetry measurements have shown that the Scotch-yoke generator produces pure sinusoidal instantaneous mean velocities with a mean deviation of 3%. Visualizations by laser-induced fluorescence and velocity measurements, coupled with the numerical results, have permitted analysis of the evolution of the swirling secondary flow structures that develop along the bends during the pulsation phase. These measurements were made for a range of steady Reynolds number (300≤Rest≤1200), frequency parameter (1≤α=r0⋅(ω/υ)1/2<20), and two velocity component ratios (β=Umax,osc/Ust). We observe satisfactory agreement between the numerical and experimental results. For high β, the secondary flow structure is modified by a Lyne instability and a siphon effect during the deceleration phase. The intensity of the secondary flow decreases as the parameter α increases during the acceleration phase. During the deceleration phase, under the effect of reverse flow, the secondary flow intensity increases with the appearance of Lyne flow. Experimental results also show that pulsating flow through a twisted curved pipe increases mixing over the steady twisted curved pipe. This mixing enhancement increases with β.