Wind tunnel experiments were performed to determine both the average heat transfer coefficient and the radial distribution of the local heat transfer coefficient for a circular disk facing a uniform oncoming flow. The experiments covered the range of Reynolds numbers Re from 5000 to 50,000 and were performed using the naphthalene sublimation technique. To complement the experiments, an analysis incorporating both potential flow theory and boundary layer theory was used to predict the stagnation point heat transfer. The measured average Nusselt numbers definitively resolved a deep disparity between information from the literature and yielded the correlation Nu = 1.05 Pr0.36 Re1/2. The radial distributions of the local heat transfer coefficient were found to be congruent when they were normalized by Re1/2. Furthermore, the radial profiles showed that the local coefficient takes on its minimum value at the stagnation point and increases with increasing radial distance from the center of the disk. At the outer edge of the disk, the coefficient is more than twice as large as that at the stagnation point. The theoretical predictions of the stagnation point heat transfer exceeded the experimental values by about 6 percent. This overprediction is similar to that which occurs for cylinders and spheres in crossflow.
New data processing of local heat transfer coefficient inside a rectangular channel
