Investigation of natural convection in convergent vertical channels

✍ Scribed by S. A. M. Said

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 426 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0363-907X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-114x(199607)20:7<559::aid-er115>3.0.co;2-j

✦ Synopsis

Using air as the working fluid, natural convection heat transfer in a uniform wall temperature convergent vertical channel has been investigated numerically. The investigation encompassed half angles of convergence between 0" (parallel-walled channel) and 10" and the solutions were performed for ( S / L ) Ra, range of 1 to 2 x lo4. In order to find a correlation format which will merge the convergent channel results for low Rayleigh number ranges (Ra' < lo2) with those for the parallel-walled channel ones, the minimum (Smin), mean (SaVg), and maximum (Smax) interval spacing between channel walls were used as characteristic dimensions. It was found that merging was best achieved by the use of maximum interval spacing (Smm) as the characteristic dimension. These numerical findings agree with those for high Rayleigh number ranges (Ra' > lo2) reported in the literature.