Natural Convection in Collector Cavities With an Isoflux Absorber Plate

1983 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. M. Schinkel ◽  
C. J. Hoogendoorn

The boundary condition at the hot absorber plate in a solar collector will influence the natural convection in the enclosure. For the isoflux boundary condition and an isothermal cold wall an experimental and numerical study has been made for Ra numbers from 105 to 107 and inclinations from 20 to 90 deg with the horizontal. For vertical enclosures the heat transfer by natural convection was about 19 percent above that for an isothermal hot plate. This decreases with angle of inclination, to 9 percent at 20 deg. For solar collectors it means that for cases where the absorber plate is not isothermal the convective losses can be about 10 percent above the usually expected values.

1989 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 416-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Beckermann ◽  
R. Viskanta

A combined experimental and numerical study is reported of melting of a pure metal inside a vertical rectangular enclosure with natural convection in the liquid and conduction in the solid. The numerical model is successfully verified by conducting a series of experiments covering a wide range of hot and cold wall temperatures. It is found that solid subcooling significantly reduces the melting rate when compared to melting with the solid at the fusion temperature. Because the cooled wall is held below the fusion temperature of the metal, the solid/liquid interface eventually reaches a stationary position. For moderate values of the subcooling parameter the steady-state interface is almost vertical and parallel to the cold wall. Strong subcooling results in an early termination of the melting process, such that natural convection in the relatively small liquid region cannot fully develop. For moderate subcooling, correlations have been derived for the steady-state volume and heat transfer rates. While many aspects of melting with solid subcooling appear to be similar to ordinary nonmetallic solids, important differences in the local flow structures and heat transfer mechanisms are observed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53
Author(s):  
Abbas Jassem Jubear ◽  
Ali Hameed Abd

The heat sink with vertically rectangular interrupted fins was investigated numerically in a natural convection field, with steady-state heat transfer. A numerical study has been conducted using ANSYS Fluent software (R16.1) in order to develop a 3-D numerical model.  The dimensions of the fins are (305 mm length, 100 mm width, 17 mm height, and 9.5 mm space between fins. The number of fins used on the surface is eight. In this study, the heat input was used as follows: 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 watts. This study focused on interrupted rectangular fins with a different arrangement and angle of the fins. Results show that the addition of interruption in fins in various arrangements will improve the thermal performance of the heat sink, and through the results, a better interruption rate as an equation can be obtained.


1975 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Forbes ◽  
J. W. Cooper

Natural convection in horizontal layers of water cooled from above to near freezing was studied analytically. The water was confined laterally and underneath by rigid insulators, and the upper horizontal surface was subjected to: (1) a constant 0C temperature, rigid conducting boundary, and (2) a free, water to air convection boundary condition, in which the convective heat transfer coefficient was held constant at values of 5.68 W/m2 · K and 284 W/m2 · K (1.0 and 50.0 Btu/hr ft2F) and the temperature of the ambient air was maintained at 0C. The ratios of the width to the depth of the rectangular water layers under consideration were W/D = 1, 3, and 6. Initially the water is assumed to be at a uniform temperature of either 4C or 8C, and then the upper surface boundary condition was suddenly applied. It was observed in all cases for which the initial water temperature was 4C, that the water remained stagnant and became thermally stratified. Heat transfer application of either of the surface boundary conditions to water initially at 8C produced large convective eddies extending from the bottom to the top of the layer of water. As the liquid layer cooled further, two distinct horizontal regions appeared, the 4C isothermal line separating the two. This produces a region of hydrodynamic instability in the fluid since the maximum density fluid (4C) is physically located above the less dense fluid in the lower portion of the cavity. The large eddies which appeared initially were confined to the hydrodynamically unstable region bounded by the 4C isotherm and the bottom of the cavity. The action of viscous shearing forces upon the stable water above the 4C isotherm produced a second “layer” of eddies. An alternating direction implicit finite difference method was used to solve the coupled system of partial differential equations. The paper presents transient isotherms and streamlines and a discussion of the effect of maximum density on the flow patterns.


Author(s):  
Ajay Vallabh ◽  
P.S. Ghoshdastidar

Abstract This paper presents a steady-state heat transfer model for the natural convection of mixed Newtonian-Non-Newtonian (Alumina-Water) and pure Non-Newtonian (Alumina-0.5 wt% Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC)/Water) nanofluids in a square enclosure with adiabatic horizontal walls and isothermal vertical walls, the left wall being hot and the right wall cold. In the first case the nanofluid changes its Newtonian character to Non-Newtonian past 2.78% volume fraction of the nanoparticles. In the second case the base fluid itself is Non-Newtonian and the nanofluid behaves as a pure Non-Newtonian fluid. The power-law viscosity model has been adopted for the non-Newtonian nanofluids. A finite-difference based numerical study with the Stream function-Vorticity-Temperature formulation has been carried out. The homogeneous flow model has been used for modelling the nanofluids. The present results have been extensively validated with earlier works. In Case I the results indicate that Alumina-Water nanofluid shows 4% enhancement in heat transfer at 2.78% nanoparticle concentration. Following that there is a sharp decline in heat transfer with respect to that in base fluid for nanoparticle volume fractions equal to and greater than 3%. In Case II Alumina-CMC/Water nanofluid shows 17% deterioration in heat transfer with respect to that in base fluid at 1.5% nanoparticle concentration. An enhancement in heat transfer is observed for increase in hot wall temperature at a fixed volume fraction of nanoparticles, for both types of nanofluid.


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