S. P. Venkateshan

Experimental study of free convection and radiation in horizontal fin arrays

Abstract An experimental investigation of interaction of free convection and radiation in a horizontal fin array is carried out. A differential interferometer is used to obtain free convection heat transfer and radiation is calculated by solving the integro-differential equations numerically. Results are presented to show the effects of various parameters such as emissivity of the fin surfaces, fin spacing, fin height and base temperature. Correlations are suggested in terms of non-dimensional parameters, based on a large number of experiments. The main conclusion to be drawn from the present study is that radiation—convection interaction invalidates additive approaches in which convection and radiation contributions are independently calculated assuming all surfaces to be isothermal and then adding these to obtain the total heat loss from the fin array.

Experimental studies on steady free convection heat transfer from fins and fin arrays

This paper deals with an experimental study of free convective heat transfer from fins and fin arrays attached to a heated horizontal base. The technique of differential interferometry has been utilised and experiments have been carried out under steady state conditions. Local values of heat flux, temperature, heat transfer coefficients, local and overall Nusselt numbers have been estimated. An attempt has been made to discuss in detail the flow and heat transfer mechanisms for three cases namely an isothermal vertical flat plate, a single fin attached to a heated horizontal base and a fin array in the light of the experimental findings. Correlations are presented relating the overall Nusselt number with the relevant non-dimensional parameters in these cases.ZusammenfassungDiese Abhandlung beschäftigt sich mit einer experimentellen Studie über freie konvektive Wärmeübertragung von Rippen und Rippenfeldern, die an eine erwärmte horizontale Grundfläche angebracht sind. Es wurde die Technik der differentiellen Interferometrie verwendet. Die Versuche sind unter konstanten Zustandsbedingungen ausgeführt worden. Lokale Werte des Wärmestroms, der Temperatur, des Wärmeübertragungskoeffizienten sowie lokale und mittlere Nusseltzahlen sind bestimmt worden. Der Strömungs- und Wärmeübertragungsmechanismus wurde an drei Fällen detailliert untersucht: nämlich eine isotherme vertikale ebene Platte; eine einzelne Rippe, angebracht an einer beheizten horizontalen Grundfläche und ein dem Strahlengang entsprechend angeordnetes Rippenfeld. Für diese drei Fälle werden die Berechnungen der mittleren Nusseltzahl in Abhängigkeit der relevanten dimensionslosen Parameter dargestellt.

Conjugate Mixed Convection With Surface Radiation From a Vertical Plate With a Discrete Heat Source

The results of a numerical study of the problem of two-dimensional, steady, incompressible, conjugate, laminar, mixed convection with surface radiation from a vertical plate with a flush-mounted discrete heat source are reported. The governing equations, written in vorticity-stream function form, are solved using a finite-volume based finite difference method. A hybrid grid system has been employed for discretization of the computational domain. The effects of (i) the magnitude and location of the heat source, (ii) the material and surface properties of the plate, and (iii) the free-stream velocity on both heat transfer and fluid flow have been studied. Based on a large set of (more than 550) numerical data, correlations have been developed for maximum and average non-dimensional plate temperatures and mean friction coefficient. A method for evaluating the forced convection mean friction coefficient component, which may be used in estimating the power input required for maintaining the flow, has been proposed

Experimental analysis of unsteady free convection heat transfer from horizontal fin arrays

Experimental work has been carried out on horizontal fin arrays using the differential interferometric technique. The local variations of heat flux and temperature in the central fin of a three fin array have been studied in the transient heating and cooling regimes. The average values of heat transfer coefficients in the transient state have been calculated for three spacings of 10 mm, 15 mm and 25 mm and with two materials namely aluminum and mild steel under constant heat input to the system. The results have been compared with experimental findings in the cases of a single fin attached to a base and a vertical isothermal flat plate. Attempt has been made to explain the differences between these cases in relation to the physical mechanism of heat and fluid flow about a fin array.ZusammenfassungUnter Anwendung der Differential-Interferometrie-Technik wurde eine experimentelle Arbeit auf dem Gebiet horizontaler Anordnungen von Kühlrippen durchgeführt. Die lokale Veränderung von Wärmestrom und Temperatur der mittleren Rippe einer Dreieranordnung wurde an transienten Heiz- und Kühlbereichen untersucht. Im transienten Zustand wurden die Durchschnittswerte der Wärmeübertragungskoeffizienten bei konstanter Wärmezuführ in das System für Aluminium und Flußstahl bei Zwischenräumen von 10 mm, 15 mm und 20 mm berechnet. Die Berechnungen wurden mit experimentellen Ergebnissen einer einzigen, auf einer Basis befestigten Rippe und einer vertikalen isothermen flachen Platte verglichen. Es wurde der Versuch gemacht, den Unterschied zwischen diesen Fällen, in bezug auf den physikalischen Mechanismus der Wärmeübertragung und Strömung über eine Rippenanordnung, zu erklären.

Comparison of Various Methods for Simultaneous Retrieval of Surface Emissivities and Gas Properties in Gray Participating Media

An inverse radiation analysis for simultaneous estimation of the radiative properties and the surface emissivities for a participating medium in between infinitely long parallel planes, from the knowledge of the measured temperatures and heat fluxes at the boundaries, is presented. The differential discrete ordinate method is employed to solve the radiative transfer equation. The present analysis considers three types of simple scattering phase functions. The inverse problem is solved through minimization of a performance function, which is expressed by the sum of squares of residuals between calculated and observed temperatures and heat fluxes at the boundaries. To check the performance and accuracy in retrieval, a comparison is presented between four retrieval methods, viz. Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, genetic algorithm, artificial neural network, and the Bayesian algorithm. The results of the present analyses indicate that good precision in retrieval could be achieved by using only temperatures and heat fluxes at the boundaries. The study shows that the radiative properties of medium and surface emissivities can be retrieved even with noisy data using Bayesian retrieval algorithm and artificial neural network. Also, the results demonstrate that genetic algorithms are not efficient but are quite robust. Additionally, it is observed that an increase in the error in measurements significantly deteriorates the retrieval using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm.

Experimental study of natural convection in a square enclosure using differential interferometer

Abstract The results of an experimental study of laminar natural convection heat transfer in a square enclosure using air as the medium and having differentially heated isothermal vertical walls and adiabatic horizontal walls are reported. The study has been carried out using a differential interferometer (DI). After many trials, the authors have been able to achieve nearly adiabatic boundary conditions for top and bottom walls of the enclosure, in the laboratory environment. The study provides valuable information for many researchers – experimentalists or for those using numerical methods in analyzing problems of this type. A correlation for average convective Nusselt number is also provided.

Accurate determination of diffuse view factors between planar surfaces

Abstract The contour double integral formula for the view factor between a pair of finite surfaces is a particularly simple formula to implement numerically. This paper suggests a method to improve the accuracy of the numerical results using this formula, both for non-intersecting surfaces, and for intersecting surfaces. In the latter case particularly, significant improvements in accuracy are achieved using the procedure outlined in the paper.

Experiment Driven Ann-GA Based Technique for Optimal Distribution of Discrete Heat Sources Under Mixed Convection

This article reports the results of mixed convection heat transfer studies from five heat sources (aluminum) mounted at different positions on a substrate board (Bakelite). The goal is to determine the optimal arrangement, such that, the maximum temperature excess is minimum among all the possible configurations. For accomplishing this, a completely experimental driven hybrid optimization strategy, that combines Artificial neural network (ANN) with Genetic algorithm (GA) is used. Initial optimization studies are carried out by employing a heuristic non-dimensional geometric parameter λ, which is identified to be the key parameter to decide the maximum temperature in the system.

Simultaneous Estimation of Principal Thermal Conductivities of an Anisotropic Composite Medium: An Inverse Analysis

This paper reports the results of an experimental study to determine the principal thermal conductivities (kx,ky, and kz) of an anisotropic composite medium using an inverse heat transfer analysis. The direct problem consists of solving the three dimensional heat conduction equation in an orthotropic composite medium with the finite difference method to generate the required temperature distribution for known thermal conductivities. The measurement technique involves dissipating a known heat flux at the central region of a square sample and allowing it to conductively transfer the heat to an aluminium cold plate sink via a square copper ring. At steady state, temperatures at 28 (19 are used for retrievals due to symmetry) discrete locations are logged and used for parameter estimation. The entire measurement process is conducted in a vacuum environment. The inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) for retrieving the orthotropic thermal conductivity tensor(parameter estimation) is then solved using a two layer feed forward back propagation artificial neural network (ANN) trained using the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm (LMA), with temperatures as input and thermal conductivity values kx,ky, and kz as the output. The method is first validated against a stainless steel(SS-304) sample of known thermal properties followed by the determination of the orthotropic conductivities of the honeycomb composite material.

Ablation and Aero-thermodynamic Studies on Thermal Protection Systems of Sharp-Nosed Re-entry Vehicles

A quasi-one-dimensional ablation analysis for a sharp-nosed, reusable, re-entry vehicle that could possibly be used in an unmanned space program, has been carried out by using an in-house code. The code is based on the boundary immobilization technique and the solution has been obtained using the tridiagonal matrix algorithm (TDMA). The heat fluxes on the spherical nose cap that are used to determine the ablation rate of a thermal coating applied over the surface of the vehicle are obtained by performing a steady state aero-thermodynamic analysis. The aero-thermodynamic analysis for the viscous, compressible flow under consideration is carried out by using FLUENT 6.2. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed at three locations on the trajectory that the vehicle follows, on re-entry. These simulations yield the temperature and heat flux distributions along the surface of the vehicle and the latter are given as input to the ablation code. The shell material of the vehicle is assumed to be zirconium boride (ZrB 2 ). The code is validated with benchmark cases and the flow and heat transfer characteristics are also discussed. In brief, the present work presents a methodology for coupling an ablation code with CFD simulations from a commercial code, to study the effect of change of the nose region on the ablation process.