Associate Professor Afaque Shams's Lecture

Title: Understanding the need for proper turbulent heat flux modelling for non-unity Prandtl number fluids

Time: 2:00pm-3:30pm, Feb 14, 2023

Abstract

This lecture is intended to highlight the need for proper turbulent heat flux modelling in non-unity Prandtl number (Pr) flows, particularly in the liquid metal flows, using the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. The Pr number of liquid metals is of the order of 0.025-0.001, making it very challenging for "off-the-shelf" RANS models to accurately predict the heat transfer phenomena. In this regard, some peculiarities of the "off-the-shelf" RANS models will be demonstrated in different flow regimes, i.e., natural, mixed, and forced convection. Furthermore, the status and perspectives of the available turbulent heat flux modelling closures within the nuclear community will be provided with a special focus on the low-Pr fluids. Lastly, a comparison of a well-calibrated turbulent heat flux model with the classical eddy diffusivity model will be shown for natural, mixed, and forced convection flow regimes.

Prof. Shams's Biography

Afaque Shams is an associate professor in the Mechanical Department of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He is the lead of nuclear initiatives at KFUPM and also coordinating the undergrad CX Nuclear Power Engineering. Before joining KFUPM, he was the senior research consultant at Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG), the Netherlands. Shams has an MSc and PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics, and currently, he loves his role as a thermal-hydraulic expert in the nuclear community. Thanks to his vast range of expertise, he enjoys working on a variety of nuclear reactor designs. His research interests focus on turbulence modelling; high-fidelity simulations; fluid-structure interaction; numerical methods and high-performance computing. Shams has a particular interest in the numerical modelling of turbulent heat transfer in liquid metal flows. He has over a hundred peer-reviewed publications related to the aforementioned topics. He has given invited lectures in the Netherlands, United States, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. Prof. Shams is the academic editor of Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations (Hindawi) and also sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of Nuclear Engineering & Design (Elsevier).