Les of compressible turbulent annular pipe flow with a rotating wall

Flow in an annular pipe with and without a wall rotating about its axis was investigated at moderate Reynolds numbers. The compressible filtered Navier-Stokes equations were solved using a second order accurate finite volume method. Low Mach number preconditioning was used to enable the compressible code to work efficiently at low Mach numbers. A dynamic subgrid-scale stress model accounted for the subgrid-scale turbulence. When the outer wall rotated, a significant reduction of turbulent kinetic energy was realized near the rotating wall and the intensity of bursting effects appeared to decrease. This modification of the turbulent structures was related to the vortical structure changes near the rotating wall. It has been observed that the wall vortices were pushed in the direction of rotation and their intensity increased near the non-rotating wall. The consequent effect was to enhance the turbulent kinetic energy and increased the intensity of the heat transfer rate there.