THEORETICAL

Heat energy transfers between a solid and a fluid when there is a temperature
difference between the fluid and the solid. This is known as "convection heat transfer".
Generally, convection heat transfer cannot be ignored when there is a significant fluid motion
around the solid. Free convection occurs where motion of the fluid arises solely due to the
temperature differences existing within the fluid. Example: hot air rising off the surface of a
radiator.

Whereas in forced convection, the fluid is forced to flow over a surface or in a tube
by external means such as a pump or fan.
 Heat transfer from an object can be improved by increasing the surface area in contact
with the air by adding fins or pins normal to the surface. This can be seen in Newton’s Law
of Cooling, which defines the convection heat transfer rate:

The effect of the thermodynamics properties can be demonstrated by the effect of

flow velocity of a flat plate under the same conditions of power respect to time. By applying
simple overall energy balance, the heat transfer rate from a heated surface can be calculated
as,

where ρ is the density of the fluid [ kg/m3 ], um is the mean velocity of the fluid
[ m/s], and Ac is the cross-sectional area of the flow [ m2 ]. The average heat transfer
coefficient of the system, ℎ̅ [W /m2 K ], can be calculated as,

The heat transfer characteristics of a system strongly depends on whether the flow is
laminar or turbulent. The dimensionless quantities are Rayleigh number (Ra) (for free
convection) and Reynolds number (Re) (for forced convection) that are used to determine the
flow characteristics of the system. If they are smaller than a critical value, the flow is
assumed to be laminar, otherwise the flow is assumed to be turbulent. The definitions of Ra
and Re together with the critical values are given as follows,