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THERMAL SCIENCE
International Scientific Journal
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EFFECT OF HONEYCOMB STRUCTURE LAYOUT ON HEAT TRANSFER PERFORMANCE OF A HIGH-TEMPERATURE WIND TUNNEL STORAGE HEATER
ABSTRACT
To meet the demand for stable high-temperature air sources in hypersonic ground testing, this study employs three-dimensional unsteady conjugate heat transfer simulations to investigate the thermo-fluid performance of honeycomb regenerators with different pore densities under constant porosity and pitch-to-diameter ratio constraints. The results show that the high-density configuration exhibits the best thermal output and sustained heat-supply capability. At the end of 120 s of discharge, its outlet temperature is 74 K higher than that of the low-density configuration, while its outlet-temperature drop over 60-120 s is reduced by 39%. At 120 s, its solid-temperature non-uniformity decreases from 18% in the upstream section to 1.7% in the downstream section. Under high-flow conditions, the high-density configuration also shows lower sensitivity to flow-rate disturbances and achieves a 13% improvement in energy extraction efficiency. However, this thermal advantage is accompanied by a greater flow penalty, with an average resistance coefficient 2 times that of the low-density configuration.
KEYWORDS
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2026-02-03
PAPER REVISED: 2026-02-27
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2026-03-30
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2026-05-17
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI260203060Y
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© 2026 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence