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Abstract
Turbulent flow of supercritical hydrogen through a uniformly healed circular tube has been investigated using numerical methods, for the range of 4 × 105 ≤ Re ≤ 3 × 106, 5 ≤ qw ≤ 10 MW/m2, 30 ≤ Tin ≤ 90 K, and 5 ≤ Pin ≤ 15 MPa. The purpose is to validate a turbulence model and calculation method for the design of active cooling systems of hydrogen-fueled hypersonic aircraft, when the hydrogen fuel is used as coolant. The PHOENICS software package was used for the computations, which required special provision for evaluation of the thermophysical properties of the supercritical hydrogen, and a low Reynolds number form of the k-e turbulence model. Pressure drop and heat transfer data were compared with experiment and existing correlations, and good agreement was demonstrated. For the pressure range considered here a “thermal spike” was observed and shown to be due to the secondary peak in specific heat, rather than the primary peak.