摘要

In this paper, a numerical study of a chaotic mixing process that involves a highly viscous fluid is presented. The investigated mixer is composed of two circular rods maintained vertically inside a cylindrical tank. The tank and the rods are heated and can rotate around their revolution axis. Chaotic flows are obtained by imposing a temporal modulation of the rotational velocity. Unsteady equations for the conservation of momentum and energy are solved by using a pressure-based code. This code has a finite volume formulation applied to unstructured hybrid grids. The efficiency of the mixer is analyzed by focusing on the quantity of thermal energy supplied to the fluid and on the quality of the temperature homogenization. The influence of different parameters is analyzed: the type of modulation, the range of its period, the direction of rotations and the rods' eccentricity.