An Analytical Investigation of Forced Convection Heat Transfer to Fluids Near the Thermodynamic Critical Point

A numerical solution is carried out for heat transfer to fluids near the thermodynamic critical point for turbulent flow through a circular tube with constant wall heat flux. An adaptation of the Patankar-Spalding implicit finite difference marching procedure is used. Agreement of the results with experimental data for water and carbon dioxide show the solution to be quite accurate very near the critical point provided the wall temperature at inlet is less than the pseudocritical temperature of the fluid.