Author: Gülçin AktanPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Heat
Languages : en
Pages : 68
Book Description
The problem of heat transfer due to free convection in a channel formed by two parallel, isoflux, vertical plates is of considerable importance in electronic cooling applications, thermosiphons, the optimum spacing of plates or components, industrial stacks, heat exchangers, nuclear power plants and combustion involving vertical walls. Although in each implementation other physical considerations are necessary, fully developed flow with symmetric isoflux boundary condition offers a fundamental heat transfer problem. Thus, here, the fully developed laminar natural convective flow of a viscous fluid in a channel formed by heated infinitely long vertical plates is investigated. Using boundary layer approximations, the basic governing equations of continuity, momentum and energy are combined into a single equation and solved analytically for a symmetric uniform heat flux boundary condition to find the velocity and temperature profiles and heat transfer coefficients for the flow. The closed-form solutions that are presented are strightforward and simple compared to previous solutions existing in the literature. For Rayleigh numbers sufficiently small to ensure a fully developed flow, it is found that the local Nusselt number based on local wall to bulk temperature difference is 4.118. Furthermore the pressure and mass flow rates for this particular geometry are also investigated.
