Development of thermal mixing enhancement method for lower plenum of the High Temperature Test Facility

The maximum allowable temperature variation in the outlet duct connected to the lower plenum is defined as 40 K (±20 K from the average temperature), while the CFD simulations of this study indicate that the reference design suffers temperature variations in the duct as high as 100 K. To solve this issue, the installation of mixing-enhancing structures within the outlet duct were proposed and analyzed using CFD modeling. We show that using either an optimized “Kwiat” structure (developed in this study) or a motionless mixer installed in the outlet duct, the temperature variations can be brought dramatically, with acceptable increases in pressure drop. The optimal solution appears to be to install double motionless mixers with long blades in the outlet duct, which brings the temperature variation into the acceptable range (from 100 K down to 18 K), with a resulting pressure drop increase in the HTTF loop of 0.73 kPa (6% of total pressure drop).