Experimental Apparatus for the Determination of Nusselt and Rayleigh Numbers During Natural Convection From a Heated Horizontal Cylinder

Author(s):  
S¸evket O¨zgu¨r Atayılmaz ◽  
Ahmet Selim Dalkılıc¸ ◽  
Hakan Demir ◽  
Nuri Alpay Ku¨rekci

Determination of Nusselt and Rayleigh numbers during natural convection heat transfer from horizontal cylinders are investigated experimentally and numerically. Experiments are done by means of the test cabin inside a conditioned room at different environmental and surface temperatures. The environmental and cylinder surface temperatures are ranging between 10–40 °C and 20–60 °C respectively. 1 m long horizontal copper cylinder is used and has outer diameters of 4.8 mm including centered silicone covered cylindrical resistant wires inside it. The experimental apparatus is designed to capable of changing the different operating parameters such as heat flux and environmental temperature. The existence of the gap on the closed surfaces in the test cabin which can cause a stack effect, affected temperature and velocity fields, disturbance of the natural convection condition is also checked. The detailed description of design and development of the test apparatus, control devices, instrumentation, and the experimental procedure are reported and the study of experimental setups from the available literature survey with the existing one are compared in this paper. The uncertainty analysis method proposed by Kline and McClintock is used and explained elaborately. Detailed information and algorithm of numerical method are given to ease the understanding of the numerical part of study. Alteration of Nusselt numbers with Rayleigh numbers, the temperature distribution on the heated horizontal cylinder surface by means of Fluent CFD program are shown in the paper. In addition to this, Morgan’s correlation is used for the comparison of Nusselt number and is found in good agreement with the experimental results.

Author(s):  
S¸evket O¨zgu¨r Atayılmaz ◽  
Hakan Demir ◽  
O¨zden Ag˘ra ◽  
I˙smail Teke

Steady natural convection heat transfer from vertical array of equally-spaced isothermal horizontal cylinders has been investigated experimentally and numerically. Experimental study was carried out at different ambient temperatures in a conditioned room which can be maintained at a stable required value and inside a sufficiently designed test cabin. The ambient and cylinders’ surface temperatures varied 20°C to 30°C and 30°C to 60°C respectively. The experimental apparatus was designed to adjust different operating parameters such as number of cylinders, cylinders’ surface temperatures, distance between the cylinders and environmental temperature. Each cylinder surface temperature can be accurately adjusted to the desired temperature by means of specially designed measurement and control system. Copper test cylinders have length of 1 m and outer diameter of 4.8 mm. The uncertainty analysis method proposed by Kline and McClintock was used and explained elaborately. Detailed information and algorithm of numerical method are given to ease the understanding of the numerical part of the study. The problem was solved numerically by means of a CFD program in 2D. Average Nusselt numbers are given based on the experimental data for single and each two horizontal cylinders. Heat transfer rates obtained from experimental and numerical studies for upper and lower cylinders were compared with each other. The deviation of experimental and numerical heat transfer rates are in a good agreement and stay in the range ± 20%. It is seen that heat transfer from the lower cylinder is close to the single cylinder case. However, higher temperature of the passing air reduces the heat transfer from the upper cylinder for S/D = 2.


Author(s):  
M. Lacroix

A numerical study has been conducted for natural convection heat transfer for air around two horizontal heated cylinders placed inside a rectangular enclosure cooled from the side. Three cylinder spacings were investigated. The local and overall Nusselt numbers were determined over the range of Rayleigh numbers from 104 to 106. It is found that the thermal performance of the unit is strongly influenced by the Rayleigh number and, to a lesser extent, by the cylinder spacing. A correlation is suggested for the overall Nusselt number.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1407-1420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Sieres ◽  
Antonio Campo ◽  
José Martínez-Súarez

This paper presents an analytical and numerical computation of laminar natural convection in a collection of vertical upright-angled triangular cavities filled with air. The vertical wall is heated with a uniform heat flux; the inclined wall is cooled with a uniform temperature; while the upper horizontal wall is assumed thermally insulated. The defining aperture angle ? is located at the lower vertex between the vertical and inclined walls. The finite element method is implemented to perform the computational analysis of the conservation equations for three aperture angles ? (= 15?, 30? and 45?) and height-based modified Rayleigh numbers ranging from a low Ra = 0 (pure conduction) to a high 109. Numerical results are reported for the velocity and temperature fields as well as the Nusselt numbers at the heated vertical wall. The numerical computations are also focused on the determination of the value of the maximum or critical temperature along the hot vertical wall and its dependence with the modified Rayleigh number and the aperture angle.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed Al-Ahmadi ◽  
Ahmad Fakheri

Abstract Natural convection heat transfer from a horizontal helicoidal pipe is experimentally investigated for different coil-pitches. A modified characteristic length incorporating the tube diameter, the coil diameter, and the coil spacing, is proposed as the relevant scale for defining Nusselt and Rayleigh numbers. Using the proposed characteristic length, it is shown that the Nusselt number for horizontal helicoidal pipes can be determined using the available Nusselt versus Rayleigh number correlation for straight horizontal cylinders with high degree of accuracy over the range of the experimental data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghalib Y. Kahwaji ◽  
Mohanad T. Ali ◽  
Mohamed A. Samaha

Abstract In a prior study, the novel shroud−chimney configuration (SCC) (semicircular shrouds and expended chimney) has been numerically demonstrated to passively augment natural convection heat transfer from a horizontal cylinder. However, to implement such a configuration for practical utilizations, the heat flow properties must be experimentally observed and understood. In this work, a controlled experiment is carried out to validate the impact of SCC on heat transfer from a horizontal cylinder subjected to a constant measured heat flux at its inner surface. Circumferential temperature measurements at the cylinder surface, shrouds, and ambient are achieved using thermocouples. The emissivity of the cylinder is measured and utilized to estimate radiation heat loss from the cylinder surface. All presented cases are numerically simulated for validation. The measured and numerically predicted cylinder surface temperatures are within 2% agreement. Moreover, the experimentally and numerically estimated Nusselt numbers agree to within 4%, which verifies the developed correlations for enhanced convection. Finally, a parametric study is presented to show the optimum range of design parameters for the best SCC performance. A newly defined term “effective flow rate” is quantified and correlated to the optimum location of the shroud relative to the cylinder. Several SCC design correlations resulted from the analysis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Swastik Acharya ◽  
Sukanta K Dash

Numerical simulations have been conducted to study natural convection heat transfer from solid or hollow cylinders in the laminar range of Ra spanning from 104 to 108 for L/D in the range of 0.05≤(L/D)≤20. Interesting flow structures around the thin hollow cylinder have been observed for small and large L/D. It has been found that the average Nu for solid or hollow horizontal cylinders in air is marginally higher than when they are on ground for the entire range of L/D and Ra limited up to 107. Up to a Ra of 107 Nu for a solid cylinder in air is higher than that of Nu for a hollow cylinder in air but when Ra exceeds 107 Nu for a hollow cylinder is marginally higher than that of the solid cylinder until an L/D of 0.2. When, L/D rises beyond 0.2 the situation reveres causing Nu for a solid cylinder to be again higher than that of the hollow cylinder when suspended in air. A solid cylinder on ground has higher Nu compared to that of a hollow cylinder on ground up to a Ra of 106. However, for higher Ra of 108 a hollow cylinder on ground has higher Nu compared to that of a solid cylinder on ground until an L/D of 5 and after that the situation reverses again.


1988 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-Heon Lee ◽  
R. J. Goldstein

An experiment was carried out to study two-dimensional laminar natural convection within an inclined square enclosure containing fluid with internal energy sources bounded by four rigid planes of constant equal temperature. Inclination angles, from the horizontal, of 0, 15, 30, and 45 deg for Rayleigh numbers from 1.0 × 104 to 1.5 × 105 were studied. At inclined angles of 0 and 15 deg, there are two extreme values of temperature and temperature gradient within the fluid, while there is only one at 30 and 45 deg. Local and average Nusselt numbers are obtained on all four walls. As the inclination angle increases, the average Nusselt number increases on the right (upper) and bottom walls, decreases on the left (lower) wall and stays almost constant on the top wall.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (9) ◽  
pp. 1195-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed E. Ali

Experimental investigations have been reported on steady state natural convection from the outer surface of horizontal ducts in air. Five ducts have been used with aspect ratios (Γ=duct height/duct width) of 2, 1, and 0.5. The ducts are heated using internal constant heat flux heating elements. The temperatures along the surface and peripheral directions of the duct wall are measured. Longitudinal (circumference averaged) heat transfer coefficients along the side of each duct are obtained for laminar and transition regimes of natural convection heat transfer. Total overall averaged heat transfer coefficients are also obtained. Longitudinal (circumference averaged) Nusselt numbers are evaluated and correlated using the modified Rayleigh numbers for transition regime using the axial distance as a characteristic length. Furthermore, total overall averaged Nusselt numbers are correlated with the modified Rayleigh numbers, the aspect ratio, and area ratio for the laminar and transition regimes. The longitudinal or total averaged heat transfer coefficients are observed to decrease in the laminar region and to increase in the transition region. Laminar regimes are obtained only at very small heat fluxes, otherwise, transitions are observed.


1989 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. W. Lam ◽  
R. Gani ◽  
J. G. Symons

Natural convection heat transfer has been studied experimentally and numerically for horizontal prismatic cavities of trapezoidal section having a hot horizontal base, a cool inclined top, and insulated vertical walls. Experimental results are presented for a cavity with width-to-mean height ratio of 4, Rayleigh numbers (based on the mean cavity height) from 103 to 107, and top surface inclinations from 0 to 25 deg to the horizontal. For a given top surface inclination, the Nusselt–Rayleigh relationship follows the usual trend, but with an interesting anomaly, in which higher Nusselt numbers than expected are obtained in the range 8 × 103 < Ra < 2 × 105 for inclinations of 0 and 5 deg. Overall, as the inclination of the top surface is increased, the Nusselt number decreases, an effect that becomes greater at higher angles. The proportions of convective heat flow rate into the high side and low side of the cavity were measured and show distinct maxima at particular Rayleigh numbers (which are independent of the top surface inclination angle). The equation Nu = 0.168 [Ra (1 + cos θ)/2]0.278 [(1 − cos θmax)/(cos θ − cos θmax)]−0.199 correlates the experimental results to within 6.9 percent for the ranges 4 × 103 < Ra < 107 and 0 deg ≤ θ ≤ 25 deg, apart from the anomalous region previously indicated. It is suggested that this correlation applies for A ≥ 4. The numerical model uses a false transient ADI finite difference scheme to solve the governing two-dimensional vorticity and energy transport equations. Nusselt numbers computed by the model are in good agreement with the experimental values. The convective flow patterns generated by the model exhibit changes in number and in size of cells for different Rayleigh numbers and different top surface inclinations.


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