Hydrodynamic and rheological characteristics of a pseudoplastic fluid through a rotating cylinder

Abstract

The fully developed turbulent flow of pseudoplastic ($n=0.75$) and Newtonian fluids in an isothermal axially rotating cylinder has been carried out using a large eddy simulation (LES) with an extended Smagorinsky model. The simulation Reynolds number of the present predictions has been assumed to be ${\mathrm{Re}}_s=4000$ at various rotation rates $(0\le N\le 3).$ This investigation seeks to assess the influence of the centrifugal force induced by the swirl on the mean flow quantities, turbulent statistics, and instantaneous turbulence structure to describe the rheological behavior and the turbulence features. The predicted results indicate that with increasing rotation rate, the pseudoplastic fluid tends to behave like a liquid when approaching the pipe center due to the lower apparent fluid viscosity in the logarithmic region as the pipe wall rotates. Moreover, the reduction in the pseudoplastic apparent viscosity in the core region induces a pronounced increase in the axial velocity profile further away from the pipe wall toward the core region. It is interesting to note that the growth of the centrifugal force induced by the swirl driven by the rotating pipe wall results in an apparent attenuation in turbulence intensities of the axial velocity fluctuation and, consequently, in the kinetic energy of turbulent fluctuations and the turbulent Reynolds shear stress of the axial-radial velocity fluctuations, as the pipe wall rotates. Moreover, the increased rotation rate leads also to a noticeable increase in the Root mean square (RMS) of the radial and tangential fluctuations. It can be said that the transport mechanism of turbulence intensities from the axial components to the other ones exhibits a marked increase with increasing pipe wall rotation.

Keywords:

• LES
• non-Newtonian
• pseudoplastic fluid
• rotating cylinder
• turbulent flow

Conflict of interest

The author declares that he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.