Experimental investigation of Prandtl number influence on turbulent natural convection heat transfer over a vertical plate using heat and mass transfer analogy
摘要
This study investigated the turbulent natural convection heat transfer along a vertical plate experimentally for high Rayleigh number (Ra) of 1.3 × 1015 while the existing studies reached Ra ~ 1012. To obtain high Ra, the electroplating mass transfer experiments using a copper electroplating system were utilized based on the heat and mass transfer analogy. This enabled us to reduce the facility height and relax experimental difficulties, in return the Sc corresponding to the Pr became 2,094. Experiments were conducted using a copper electroplating system. The measured Nusselt number (Nu) agrees well with existing correlations in the laminar regime, whereas deviations are observed in turbulent regime. To elucidate this behavior, the local heat transfer coefficient (h) was analyzed across different flow regimes by comparing with the existing works. In the laminar regime, the heat transfer behavior exhibits similar trends regardless of Pr. However, in the turbulent regimes, a dependence on Pr emerges. Especially, the heat transfer reaches a maximum when Pr is close to unity and decreases as Pr deviates toward either lower or higher values. This behavior is attributed to the variation in the thickness of the conductive sublayer with Pr. By compiling the present data with the existing data, a multiplier for the turbulent heat transfer correlation was developed to account for the influence of Pr. The proposed model shows improved predictive accuracy compared to existing correlations over a broader range of Pr. The developed correlation shows high accuracy across a wide range of Pr, compared to existing correlation, with a mean relative error of 3.2% and a maximum relative error of 13.4%.