Numerical Analysis of Natural

Convection Heat Transfer

Swastik Acharya
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Kharagpur 721 302, India
e-mail: swastik.acharya8@gmail.com
Sumit Agrawal
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Kharagpur 721 302, India
e-mail: sumit89agr@gmail.com
Sukanta K. Dash
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Kharagpur 721 302, India
From a Vertical Hollow Cylinder
Suspended in Air
Natural convection heat transfer from a vertical hollow cylinder suspended in air has
been analyzed numerically by varying the Rayleigh number (Ra) in the laminar (104 
Ra  108) regime. The simulations have been carried out by changing the ratio of length
to pipe diameter (L/D) in the range of 0.05  L/D 20. Full conservation equations have
been solved numerically for a vertical hollow cylinder suspended in air using algebraic
multigrid solver of FLUENT 13.0. The flow and the temperature field around the vertical
hollow cylinder have been observed through velocity vectors and temperature contours
for small and large L/D. It has been found that the average Nusselt number (Nu) for verti-
cal hollow cylinder suspended in air increases with the increase in Rayleigh number (Ra)
and the Nu for both the inner and the outer surface also increases with Ra. However,
with the increase in L/D, average Nu for the outer surface increases almost linearly,
whereas the average Nu for the inner surface decreases and attains asymptotic value at
higher L/D for low Ra. In this study, the effect of parameters like L/D and Ra on Nu is
analyzed, and a correlation for average Nusselt number has been developed for the lami-
nar regime. These correlations are accurate to the level of 66%:
[DOI: 10.1115/1.4038478]

Keywords: natural convection, vertical hollow cylinder, heat loss from inner surface,
heat loss from outer surface, correlation for Nu

1 Introduction which govern the flow and temperature field around the hollow
cylinder.
Natural convection plays an important role in the cooling of
There is plenty of literature available in the field of natural con-
electrical and electronic components, casting and forging pipes
vection heat transfer such as the well-known work by Churchill
[1], air conditioning components, and heat exchanger design [2,3].
and Chu [4] and Churchill [5], where these authors experimentally
The advantage of using natural convection system for cooling pur-
developed a correlation for average Nusselt number as a function
poses is really huge because it does not need any moving parts
of Prandtl number and Rayleigh number for natural convection
which make the system less noisy, less bulky, and maintenance
from the horizontal cylinder and vertical flat plate, respectively.
free. Vertical hollow cylinders are normally used around a light
Kuehn and Goldstein [6] numerically solved the Navier–Stokes
source to direct the source to a particular point for the purpose of
equation and the energy equation for a horizontal heated cylinder
doing medical operation, tooth root canalling, and visualization of
and found that boundary layer assumptions are not valid for low
problems in human mouth. The cylinder gets minutely heated up
and moderate Rayleigh number.
in such cases and gets cooled by the ambient air flowing around
Some researchers have given the results for natural convection
the inner as well as the outer side of the cylinder due to natural
heat transfer from vertical solid cylinder by neglecting its curvature
convection. In steel industries, thick vertical cylinders are some-
effect. They also studied the effect of its curvature and the limit to
time suspended in air for immediate cooling and then placed on
which a vertical cylinder can be treated as a vertical flat plate using
the ground for slow cooling by natural convection. The ships fun-
the similarity in correlations of Nusselt number as given by Gebhart
nel to a large extent can be considered to be a thin vertical cylin-
et al. [7] and explained in Refs. [8] and [9]. However, the curvature
der which is on ground and that gets cooled up by natural
effect for the slender vertical cylinder cannot be avoided, and the
convection when the engine is not operating, and even if the
correlation obtained was different from that given by Popiel et al.
engine operates, the outer side of the cylinder gets cooled by natu-
[10]. LeFevre and Ede [11] proposed an integral heat transfer solu-
ral convection. Many a time, light sources are provided with thin
tion that accounts for the effect of wall curvature in laminar range.
cylinders around them for the purpose of beautification and the
Minkowycz and Sparrow [12] developed a local nonsimilarity solu-
cylinder is expected to cool off due to natural convection around
tion method which was applied to solve natural convection on a
it. There are many practical aspects of thin vertical hollow cylin-
vertical cylinder with large curvature. The heat transfer rate for
der in air, cooling off due to natural convection and a study of the
laminar natural convection from the outer surface of a vertical cyl-
heat transfer characteristics for such a cylinder is essential for bet-
inder was compared with that from a vertical flat plate by Fujii and
ter design which is missing in the current day research. So, our
Uehara [13]. Kuiken [14] investigated the radial curvature effects
objective is to study such a phenomenon in detail and provide a
on axisymmetric free convection boundary layer flow for vertical
detail view of the natural convection current around a thin hollow
cylinders and cones with nonuniform temperature difference
cylinder suspended in air by solving the mathematical equations
between the surface and ambient fluid. Day et al. [15] revisited the
topic of laminar natural convection from isothermal vertical cylin-
der. They performed experiments to determine Nusselt number for
Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division of ASME for publication in the
JOURNAL OF HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received March 30, 2017; final manuscript
an isothermal vertical cylinder which was placed on an adiabatic
received September 13, 2017; published online January 30, 2018. Assoc. Editor: surface in a quiescent air. Two cases were studied by them. In the
Zhixiong Guo. first case, they kept the top of the cylinder adiabatic, and in second,

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 they kept it isothermal. They found that the average surface Nusselt for low L/D. For such a system, the starting point of analysis is the
number for the heated top was less than that of the adiabatic top. A Navier–Stokes equations of conservation of momentum, the
new correlation for average surface Nusselt number was also devel- energy and the continuity equation which are written in cylindri-
oped for Pr ¼ 0.7, 102  Ra  109, and 0.1  L/D  10. cal coordinate system (r–z equations) here for ready reference.
Recently, Acharya and Dash [16,17] numerically solved natural Continuity equation
convection heat transfer from an isothermal horizontal hollow cyl-
inder without perforation and with perforation, and also proposed 1 @ ðrvr Þ @ ðvz Þ
a suitable correlation for Nusselt number while presenting the þ ¼0 (1)
r @r @z
flow and thermal plume around the cylinder for many interesting
cases. Until now, there is no significant numerical or experimental r-momentum equation
work available on natural convection heat transfer from vertical    
hollow cylinders, which has many real life applications. The pres- @vr @vz @p @ 2 vr 1 @vr vr @ 2 vr
q vr þ vz ¼ þl þ  þ (2)
ent work is aimed toward this direction where we plan to present @r @z @r @r 2 r @r r 2 @z2
the flow and thermal plume around a vertical hollow cylinder sus-
pended in air by solving the momentum and energy equation z-momentum equation
which governs the physical situation.    
@vz @vz @p @ 2 vz 1 @vz @ 2 vz
q vr þ vz ¼ þl þ þ 2
2 Problem Description @r @z @z @r 2 r @r @z
Figure 1(a) shows the isometric view of a vertical hollow cylin-  qgz bðT  T1 Þ (3)
der, while Fig. 1(b) shows the schematic diagram of computa-
tional domain of a vertical hollow cylinder in cross-sectional view Energy equation
along with the boundary conditions for which the numerical anal-
     
ysis has been planned to be carried out. The surface of the cylin- @T @T 1@ @T @2T
der is maintained at a constant temperature (Tw ¼ 326 K). The qcP vr þ vz ¼k r þ 2 (4)
@r @z r @r @r @z
present objective is to find out the natural convection flow pattern
and the temperature plume around the vertical hollow cylinder
suspended in air for various aspect ratios (L/D). After a solution In order to make the momentum equations sensitive to natural
of the flow and temperature field, the average Nu of the cylinder, convection, we have added the buoyancy term which has the
Nu for the outer and inner walls of the cylinder, is to be computed inherent Boussinesq approximation embedded in it. The density q
in the range of Ra from 104 to 108 (which is in the laminar range). is computed at the reference temperature which is constant in the
flow field and the variable density due to temperature variation is
taken care of by the term bðT  T1 Þ, where the local temperature
3 Mathematical Analysis T is computed from the energy equation (4). The present computa-
The flow around a vertical hollow cylinder would be steady, tions are done for a temperature difference of 26 K. Since the
laminar, and two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric when we use it objective is to develop a flow pattern around the cylinder and find

Fig. 1 (a) Three-dimensional (3D) view of a vertical hollow cylinder suspended

in air and (b) schematic diagram of computational domain showing a vertical
hollow cylinder in cross-sectional view (2D axisymmetric geometry)

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 the average Nu, the present approximation of Boussinesq [18]
would remain valid for the entire range of temperature difference.
4 Heat Transfer Parameter
For computing the average Nusselt number Nu of the cylinder,
we defined
gbðTw  T1 ÞL3
Ra ¼ and
a
Q ¼ hAt ðTW  T1 Þðproperties at mean temperatureÞ
where At is the total surface area of the cylinder from where heat is
being lost. At ¼ 2pDL for vertical hollow cylinder. The heat trans-
fer rate ÐQ is available to us from the field integration of temperature
field  k@T=@rdA around the cylinder. So, the unknown value of
heat transfer coefficient, h, now can be computed as follows:
5 Boundary Conditions
In order to solve Eqs. (1)–(4), we need to specify the boundary
conditions on the domain as has been shown in Figs. 1(a)
and 1(b). The cylinder surface is given a name “wall boundary
(isothermal wall),” where vr is the velocity normal to it and vz is
the velocity tangential to it which are set to zero. The cylinder sur-
face temperature is set to a constant value of Tw
vr ¼ vz ¼ 0; T ¼ TW (7)
(5)
At the outer computational domain, the three outer sides top, bot-
tom, and right are given a pressure outlet boundary condition. The
left side of the domain in connection with cylinder is treated as an
axis as has been shown in Fig. 1(b) at the pressure outlet bound-
ary, atmospheric pressure would prevail, and the backflow (if
present) would have a temperature of surrounding air only
P ¼ Patm ; T ¼ T1 (8)

Q hL QL
h¼ and Nu ¼ ¼ (6)
At ðTW  T1 Þ k At ðTW  T1 Þk 6 Numerical Procedure
The governing differential equations (1)–(4) are integrated over
It can be seen from Eq. (6) that the computed value of Nu is propor-
a control volume and then discretized using the finite volume
tional to the net heat loss Q from the cylinder and a prescription of technique to obtain a set of algebraic equations. The resulting
h is not needed for the computation of Q or Nu in our work. algebraic equations are then solved by the multigrid solver of
FLUENT 13.0 [19] using appropriate boundary conditions which
have been stated earlier. For pressure discretization, we have used
body force weighted scheme, and in the momentum and energy
equations, the convective terms have been discretized using first-
order upwind scheme for a trial convergence. It is then switched
over to second-order upwind for the final converged solution
which is believed to be more accurate. The diffusive terms of
momentum and energy equations are discretized so that they are

Fig. 2 Variation of average Nusselt number Nu with the domain

height

Fig. 4 Variation of Nusselt number Nu with the computational

cells

Fig. 5 Variation of Nusselt number with Rayleigh number: a

Fig. 3 Grid arrangement in the domain (a) and a blown-up view comparison between the present computation and the experi-
of cells near the wall (b) mental correlations for vertical solid cylinder

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 Table 1 Comparison of average Nu in 2D and 3D

Ra ¼ 106 Nuouter surface 3D Nuouter surface 2D Percentage change Nuinner surface 3D Nuinner surface 2D Percentage change

L/D ¼ 5 21.72 21.51 0.97 12.67 12.96 2.28

L/D ¼ 10 24.987 24.94 0.188 5.789 5.865 1.29

at least second-order accurate in space (central difference scheme

is used). SIMPLE algorithm is used for coupling the velocity and
pressure terms in pressure correction equation, which is more sta-
ble and takes less time compared to other schemes. We have used
the relaxation factor 0.3 for pressure and 0.7 for momentum as
these values were found to be the most suitable ones to make the
solution converge faster. The pressure-based solver is employed
and the laminar viscous model is used. The initial guesses for the
two velocities were set to zero, and the temperature for the flow
field and the surface temperature of cylinder were set to ambient
and Tw, respectively. The convergence criterion used for energy
equation was 106, and for all other equations, it was 104.
6.1 Domain Independent Test. The vertical hollow cylinder
is kept at a location in the rectangular domain such that the bottom
of the cylinder is at a distance of L/2 from the bottom surface of
the domain. The side surfaces of the cylinder are at a distance of L
from the side surfaces of the domain, while the top of the cylinder
is at a distance of nL (n is an integer) from the top surface of the
domain. After many simulations, we have found that the bottom
of the cylinder from the bottom surface of domain and side surfa-
ces of cylinder from side surfaces of domain do not influence the
result at all, so we have fixed it at L/2 for bottom of the cylinder
and at L for side surfaces of the cylinder, while the domain height
was seen to be influencing the result to some extent so we have
kept the top surface of the domain as a varying height of nL from
the top surface of the cylinder to see the effect on Nu.
From Fig. 2, it can be observed that the domain height has a
negligible effect on the average Nu for the present problem. We
have fixed the domain height at 6L which is sufficient for domain
independence and also gives us a comprehensive view of the flow
field above the cylinder.

6.2 Grid Independence Test. Figure 3(a) shows the grid

arrangement of the computational domain and Fig. 3(b) shows the
blown-up view of the cells near the cylinder wall and inside the
cylinder. The thick line (Fig. 3(a)) shows the axis of the cylinder
and the thin line the wall of the cylinder. The wall thickness is
zero in the present case which signifies that D/thickness is infinite. Fig. 7 Variation of mass flow rate of air entering the cylinder
We have kept the cell size to be small close to the cylinder wall as a function of Ra and L/D: (a) dimensional and (b)
of the cylinder to capture the boundary layer effect and natural nondimensional

Fig. 6 Temperature contour for various Ra at L/D 5 5

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 Fig. 8 Variation of heat transfer rate as a function of Ra and L/D

convection plume formation more accurately, and in the rest of (9), one can still use the flat plate result by multiplying a factor F
the computational domain, the cells are little larger because the to it to account for curvature effect as per the analysis of Minko-
flow is not changing there too much. Figure 4 shows the variation wycz and Sparrow for gases with Prandtl number Pr ¼ 0.7 and
of Nu with the number of computational cells. It can be observed where
for cells greater than 3.74  104 that the average Nu remains
2 31=4
almost constant. So, for the remaining simulations with L/D ¼ 5,
L
we have used a similar grid and whenever L/D changed we have 6 7
performed a similar grid independence test before reporting the 4 D 5
F ¼ 1:3 þ 1:0 (10)
results. GrD

The experimental correlations of Churchill and McAdam are

6.3 Test of Validation. Figure 5 shows the variation of the given below, through Eqs. (11) and (12), respectively, for a verti-
average Nusselt number with Rayleigh number for a vertical solid cal cylinder in natural convection:
cylinder. The present numerical results are compared with the
2 32
existing experimental correlations given by Churchill (11) and 1=6
McAdams (12).The validation for vertical solid cylinder was per- 0:387ðRaÞ
Nu ¼ F6
60:825 þ
7 (11)
formed using these correlations in the following way. The Nusselt 6  9=16 !8=27 7
7
number and the Grashof number for vertical surfaces are a func- 4 0:492 5
1þ
tion of a characteristic dimension which is the height of the cylin- Pr
der (L). For the calculation of heat transfer from vertical cylinder,
they used the same relation as used for vertical flat plate if the Nu ¼ 0:59FðRaÞ1=4 for 104  Ra  109 (12)
boundary layer thickness is not large compared to diameter of cyl-
inder. This means a vertical cylinder may be treated as a vertical Figure 5 shows the present computation for a vertical solid cylin-
flat plate as suggested by Gebhart et al. when der without any assumption of curvature effect since we are solv-
D 35 ing a set of partial differential equations with proper boundary
 (9) conditions where the effect of curvature and end effect due to
L Gr1=4
L shortness of a cylinder is inbuilt. From Fig. 5, it is clear that the
present computation has replicated the results of Churchill and
where D is the diameter of the cylinder, L is length of the cylinder, McAdam extremely well. From this numerical experiment, we
and GrL is the Grashof number based on length of the cylinder. could proceed to simulate the flow and thermal field for a vertical
For those vertical cylinders that do not satisfy the above condition hollow cylinder since we get a good matching of Nu with the

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 Fig. 9 Variation of Nu with Ra as a function of L/D

Fig. 10 Thermal plume around a vertical hollow cylinder for various L/D at Ra 5 107

existing correlations for a solid cylinder. It is to be noted that, for
this case of validation of Nu for a solid vertical cylinder, we have
taken the domain length to be 6L and the domain width to be
L þ R where the number of cells was 64,000. The numerical pro-
cedure was exactly the same that we had used for a hollow cylin-
der in the present case which has already been given in Sec. 6.
6.4 Justification for Using 2D Axisymmetric Approach as
Compared to 3D. A vertical hollow cylinder is geometrically axi-
symmetric about its axis, and hence, the flow field around it is
expected to be axisymmetric particularly when the flow is lami-
nar. However, for turbulent flow with a k–e model where average
flow properties are solved, there also the flow can be assumed to
be axisymmetric unless one is interested in the flow structure
around the close vicinity of the cylinder with end effects. Since
our objective is laminar natural convection around the hollow cyl-
inder, we can either choose a 2D axisymmetric situation or a 3D
solution. We have in fact taken both the approaches and have
computed the Nu as a function of Ra and L/D which is shown in
Table 1. From Table 1, it is clear that the Nu computed on the
outer and the inner surface of the cylinder is almost the same with

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 both the approaches that have been adopted. The computational
time to obtain a solution in 3D is almost five times to that of the
2D axisymmetric approach. So, it is prudent to adopt the 2D axi-
symmetric approach to obtain a solution for the hollow vertical
cylinder.
7 Result and Discussion
7.1 Effect of Ra on Nu With the Variation in L/D. Figure 6
shows the thermal plume around the vertical hollow cylinder sus-
pended in air for various Ra when L/D is 5. It can be seen that, as
Ra increases from 104 to 108, the thermal plume becomes thinner
and thinner. At lower Ra, the flow around the cylinder is less and
the thermal boundary layer can penetrate deep into the surround-
ing fluid for which the layer thickness is larger. At high Ra, the
flow is much stronger around the cylinder so the plume becomes
thinner. Figure 7 shows the mass flow rate of air that enters the
cylinder and leaves it at any Ra as a function of L/D. As Ra
increases, the mass flow rate flowing through the cylinder also
increases and the flow rate falls with rising L/D at a constant Ra.
As L/D increases, the flow gets higher resistance from the cylinder
inner walls so the flow passing through the cylinder falls with the
increase in L/D at a particular Ra.
It can be noticed from Fig. 7(a) that, at L/D ¼ 5, the mass flow
rate of air for cooling purposes is about 100 times more than that
available at L/D ¼ 20. Lower L/D normally signifies short cylinder
or big diameter cylinder, whereas high L/D refers to long cylinder
with smaller diameter. For the case of low L/D, the flow resistance
is much smaller compared to that of high L/D. So, more flow is
seen to be occurring in the case of low L/D. Figure 7(b) also
shows the nondimensional mass flow rate through the hollow cyl-
inder where the base orpthe characteristic flow rate has been taken
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
to be m_ characteristic ¼ q gbLðTs  T1 ÞpD2 =4 through the hollow
cylinder having length L and diameter D. For L/D more than 2,
there exists a particular Ra and L/D where the nondimensional
mass flow rate through the cylinder attains a maximum. For L/D
less than 1, we could not get a maximum nondimensional flow
rate within the range of Ra that we have studied.
With the increase in L/D, the heat loss from the inner surface
would be much less as compared to the outer surface. So, the Nu
difference would be prominent as L/D increases for a particular
Ra. From Fig. 9, it can be seen that the Nu for the outer surface
increases with L/D at a particular Ra, while the Nu for the inner
surface decreases. With the increase in L/D, the flow resistance
increases so the heat loss from the inner surface decreases and
hence the Nu, but for the outer surface the flow resistance does
not come into play anymore. Rather with rise in L/D the buoy-
ancy, current becomes stronger near the outside wall of the cylin-
der which causes more heat to be transferred to the surroundings
causing the overall Nu to rise. From Fig. 9, it can also be seen that
the Nu for the outer surface of the hollow cylinder is marginally
higher than that of the solid cylinder at higher Ra of 107 or more.
Since the heat loss from the outer surface of the hollow cylinder is
more compared to that of the solid cylinder, the Nu would be
more for the hollow cylinder. The reason for this has been given
in Sec. 7.2.
7.4 Effect of L/D on Nu as a Function of Ra. Figure 10
shows the thermal plume around a vertical hollow cylinder where
its L/D varies from 1 to 20 when the Ra is fixed at 107. It can be
seen that the thermal plume is somewhat thinner at high L/D com-
pared to low L/D. At low L/D, the cylinder diameter is large com-
pared to high L/D, and from the picture, it is seen that the cylinder
at L/D ¼ 20 is very thin compared to a cylinder at L/D ¼ 1.
At low L/D, the thermal plume has a temperature much lower
compared to that at high L/D of 20 where the thermal plume tem-
perature is quite high. At high L/D, the flow resistance is much
higher compared to low L/D so the flow passing through the cylin-
der is much lower compared to the case of low L/D. So, the lower

7.2 Effect of Ra on Heat Loss. Figure 8 shows the heat loss

from the hollow cylinder as a function of Ra and L/D. As Ra
increases, the heat loss from the outer and the inner surface of the
cylinder increases since the buoyancy becomes stronger with ris-
ing Ra. The heat loss from the outer surface is always seen to be
higher than that of the inner surface. It can also be seen from
Fig. 8 that, as L/D increases, the difference between the heat loss
between the two surfaces also increases and the difference
becomes very prominent at higher Ra. With rise in L/D, it can be
seen that the heat loss from the cylinder becomes less and less at a
particular Ra for both the hollow and solid cylinders. Figure 8
also shows a comparison between the hollow and solid cylinders
in terms of heat loss from its outer surface. Up to a Ra of 107, the
heat loss from the outer surface of the solid and hollow cylinder is
almost the same at a particular L/D. Beyond an Ra of 107, the heat
loss from the outer surface of the hollow cylinder is marginally
more than that of the solid cylinder for all L/D. At higher Ra, the
buoyant plume is stronger around the cylinder and the plume pass-
ing through the inner surface of the cylinder attracts the outer air
toward it when the plume comes out of the hollow cylinder at its
end. So, the heat loss would be marginally more for the case of
hollow cylinder compared to that of the solid cylinder where such
effects of plume attraction at its end do not exist.

7.3 Effect of Ra on Nu. Figure 9 shows the variation of Nu

as a function of Ra and L/D. Figure 9 shows that, as Ra increases,
the Nu from the outer and the inner surface of the cylinder
increases and the Nu for the outer surface is always higher than
that of the inner surface. With the increase in L/D, the difference Fig. 11 Variation of dimensional and nondimensional mass
between the Nu for the two surfaces increases at a particular Ra. flow rates through the cylinder as a function of Ra and L/D

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 flow cannot take away much heat from the inner wall of the cylin-
der compared to the case of a low L/D. So, the inner side of the
cylinder remains hotter, and hence, the plume looks to be red
compared to the case of low L/D at 1. As we proceed from
L/D ¼ 1–20, the plume becomes hotter and hotter in the inner
core.
It can be seen from Fig. 11(a) that the mass flow rate of air
passing through the cylinder at a Ra of 108 is about 1000 times
more than the mass flow rate at a Ra of 104 for L/D ¼ 1. As L/D
increases, the mass flow rate of air passing through the cylinder
decreases due to higher flow resistance being offered by the cylin-
der. However, at a particular L/D, the mass flow rate of air passing
through the cylinder increases as the Ra increases. Figure 11(b)
shows the nondimensional mass flow rate through the hollow cyl-
inder as a function of L/D and Ra. It can be seen that the nondi-
mensional mass flow rate has a maximum for all Ra at some L/D.
As Ra increases, the maximum flow rate occurs at higher L/D.
Figure 11(b) is a byproduct of Fig. 11(a). At a particular Ra, the
length L is fixed and the mass flow rate decreases a lot with a
decrease in D and hence with an increase in L/D. The nondimen-
sional mass flow rate is a ratio of dimensional mass flow rate to
that of D2 at a particular Ra. Since the mass flow rate falls very
rapidly with a decrease in D, we get a first rising and then a falling
curve with the increase in L/D.
7.5 Effect of L/D on Heat Loss. Figure 12 shows the heat
loss from the inner and the outer surface of the hollow cylinder
when placed vertically in air. As L/D increases, the heat loss from
both the surfaces decreases sharply and then the decrease in heat
Fig. 12 Heat loss from the inner and outer surfaces of the cylinder as a function of L/D and Ra
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loss flattens to some extent with the increase in L/D. At higher Ra,
the heat loss is more compared to lower Ra for all L/D and the
heat loss from the outer surface is always more compared to that
of the inner surface as long as Ra is limited to 106. However,
when Ra goes beyond 106, the heat loss from the inner surface
becomes more than that of the outer one only when L/D is limited
to 0.3. For L/D more than 0.3, the heat loss from the outer surface
becomes more than that of the inner surface for Ra more than 106
as can be seen from Fig. 12.
7.6 Effect of L/D on Nu. Figure 13 shows the variation of
average Nu for the inner and the outer surface of the hollow cylin-
der as L/D varies from 0.05 to 20. For the outer surface, Nu
increases almost linearly with L/D. As Ra increases, Nu for the
outer surface increases considerably. For the inner surface, Nu
decreases with the increase in L/D and the decrease is pretty pecu-
liar as can be seen from Fig. 13. At low Ra of 104 and 106, the Nu
for the inner surface decreases sharply with L/D and then tends to
flatten out as L/D increases from 10 to 20. The Nu for the inner
surface attains an asymptotic value at lower Ra, but for higher Ra
the asymptotic Nu for the inner surface would be attended at L/D
more than 20 which is clear from Fig. 13. At a particular L/D, the
heat loss increases with Ra (Fig. 12), and hence, the Nu for the
outer and the inner surface of the cylinder which can be seen from
Fig. 13. As L/D increases, the heat loss from the outer as well as
the inner surface decreases at any Ra. But the decrease in heat
loss for the outer surface is not that much compared to that of the
inner surface. The inner surface heat loss falls drastically as L/D
increases. Increase in L/D means at a constant L the diameter D
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 Fig. 13 Variation of Nu as a function of L/D and Ra
reduces so the flow resistance offered by the inner portion of the
cylinder increases significantly, the flow passing through the cyl-
inder reduces too much, and as a result, the heat loss from the
inner surface falls very much. The same phenomenon is not true
for the outer surface, since flow resistance is not the governing
parameter to reduce the flow on the outer surface. As the diameter
reduces, the net outer area reduces and hence the heat loss. But
the ratio Q/D increases since the reduction in Q is less compared
to that of reduction in D. Nu is proportional to Q/D so the average
Nu for the outer surface shows almost a linearly increasing behav-
ior with L/D which can be seen from all the plots in Fig. 13. The
heat loss from the inner surface falls drastically due to a reduction
in D since the flow through the inner surface of the cylinder now
gets lots of resistance. The reduction in Q is no more linear with
the reduction in D. So, the Nu for the inner surface which is pro-
portional to Q/D does not decrease linearly rather quadratically
for low L/D at low Ra of 104. At high L/D, the ratio of Q/D from
the inner surface of the cylinder remains almost constant and
hence the Nu for Ra of 104. As Ra increases beyond 106, the heat
loss from the inner surface of the cylinder reduces but very insig-
nificantly with L/D. So, the ratio of Q/D, which signifies the Nu,
falls quite a lot as has been shown in Fig. 13 and does not attain a
constant value which we could see at a low Ra of 104. For the
inner surface, constancy in Nu can be achieved at high L/D for
higher Ra (106–108) since the heat loss becomes constant due to
high internal resistance to flow. It is interesting to note that the
average Nu for the inner surface at low L/D of 0.05–0.5 can be
higher than that of the outer surface which can be seen from
Fig. 13 at higher Ra of 107 and 108.
7.7 Effect of Ra on Flow Plume. Figure 14 shows the flow
field around the hollow vertical cylinder for L/D ¼ 5 at various Ra
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ranging from 104 to 108. The flow goes into the hollow cylinder
being attracted from the bottom side of the cylinder and also from
the side of the cylinder. Then, the flow from the side of the cylin-
der rises along the outer cylinder wall. The plume then travels
upward and the central portion of the cylinder contains the high
velocity plumes. The diameter of this high velocity plume is more
at low Ra and goes on reducing as Ra increases to 108. The core
velocity increases 200 times starting from a Ra of 104 to 108 as
can be seen from the vector scale.
7.8 Effect of L/D on Flow Plume. Figure 15 shows the
velocity vector around a vertical hollow cylinder at a constant Ra
of 107 while its L/D varies from 1 to 20. For all the cases of L/D,
the flow enters the cylinder with rising velocity as can be seen
from the vector scale. The flow gets attracted toward the inner sur-
face from the side and the bottom of the cylinder.
The maximum central core plume velocity remains almost
fixed at about 0.5 m/s. The developing flow around the hollow
vertical cylinder is really impressive and helps researchers to get
ideas about the natural convection plume that sets up for such a
case.
8 _
Correlations for Nu and Mass Flow Rate m
The net heat loss from the hollow cylinder is the sum of its
heat loss from both the inner and outer surfaces. So, the net aver-
age Nu can be computed according to Eq. (6) and we could
develop a correlation for Nu and mass flow rate m_ from all the
numerical data points in the form of an equation shown in
Eqs. (13) and (14). This correlation has been developed using
Polymath 6
MAY 2018, Vol. 140 / 052501-9
 Fig. 14 Velocity vector around a vertical hollow cylinder for L/D 5 5, Ra: (a) 104, (b) 105, (c) 106, (d) 107, and (e) 108

 A5
A3 L a ¼ 1:793252; b ¼ 0:0704386; c ¼ 9:110118; d ¼ 0:3522493;
Nu ¼ A1 þ A2 Ra þ A4 (13)
D e ¼ 8:917558; f ¼ 0:0292453; g ¼ 1:097272; h ¼ 0:0612339;
i ¼ 0:5063363
where A1 ¼ 18.14214, A2 ¼ 0.2858557, A3 ¼ 0.2824428, A4 ¼ 15.60552,
and A5 ¼ 0.0072213
It is to be noted that the above correlations (Eqs. (13) and (14))
 d  f are valid for low temperature difference (approximately to the
L L tune of 30 K) in the range of Ra 104–108 and L/D in the range of
_ ¼ a  ðRab Þ þ c 
lnðmÞ þ e  Ra 
D D 0.05–20. In Eq. (14), the mass flow rate is in kg/s, whereas the
 i right-hand side is dimensionless. Care has to be taken while using
L
þ g  ðRah Þ  (14) this relation.
D Equations (13) and (14) have a coefficient of correlation
R2 ¼ 0.9965837 for Nu and 0.989756 for m_ and have an accuracy
where of 66% which can be used by industrial engineers to a large

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 Fig. 15 Velocity vector around a vertical hollow cylinder for Ra 5 107, L/D: (a) 1, (b) 2.5, (c) 5, (d) 10, (e) 15, and (f) 20
extent. When plotted for its accuracy, Eqs. (13) and (14) can be
seen in Fig. 16.
9 Conclusions
Two-dimensional axisymmetric solutions of the full
Navier–Stokes equations along with the energy equation have
been carried out for a vertical hollow cylinder suspended in air in
order to compute the heat transfer from both the surfaces of the
cylinder, and hence, the Nu which can be used by practicing engi-
neers in industry. The following conclusions from the computa-
tion could be arrived at:
 For a vertical hollow cylinder suspended in air, the constancy
in heat loss occurs for all Ra ranging from 104 to 108 only
when L/D is greater than 1.
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 In all the cases of L/D, the mass flow rate of airm_ through the
cylinder increases as Ra increases, and this increase is almost
linear. But, at low L/D, the mass flow rate m_ is much more in
comparison to high L/D. For all Ra, the mass flow rate of air
m_ through the cylinder decreases as L/D increases. But the
mass flow rate of air is always high at higher Ra compared to
lower Ra at any L/D.
 In all the cases of L/D, the average Nu for both the outer and
the inner surface of the cylinder increases as the Ra
increases. The Nu for the outer surface is always higher than
that of the inner surface for a low Ra of 104–106 for L/D in
the range of 0.05–20. For a Ra beyond 106, the Nu of the
outer surface is less than that of the inner surface when L/D
is less than 0.3. For L/D more than 0.3, Nu of the outer sur-
face again remains higher compared to the inner surface
when Ra is more than 106.
MAY 2018, Vol. 140 / 052501-11
 m_ ¼ mass flow rate, kg/s
Nu ¼ average surface Nusselt number based on length
p¼ pressure, N/m2
Pr ¼ Prandtl number
Q¼ total heat transfer rate, W
r¼ radial coordinate
R¼ radius of the cylinder, m
Ra ¼ Rayleigh number based on length
t¼ time, s
T¼ fluid temperature, K
Tw ¼ cylinder surface temperature, K
T1 ¼ ambient temperature, K
vr ¼ radial velocity, m/s
vz ¼ axial velocity, m/s
Z¼ axial coordinate

Fig. 16 A comparison between predicted and the computed
value: (a) Nu and (b) mass flow rate
 The Nu of the outer surface of a hollow cylinder exactly
matches with that of the solid cylinder for all L/D when Ra is
less than 106, but for a Ra beyond 106 the Nu of the outer
surface of the hollow cylinder is marginally higher than that
of the solid cylinder. Similar behavior exists for heat loss
from the outer surface of the hollow cylinder when compared
with that of the identical solid cylinder.
 For all Ra, the average Nu for the outer surface of the hollow
cylinder increases linearly as the L/D increases. But the Nu
for the inner surface of the cylinder decreases as L/D
increases and this decrease with L/D is steep for Ra 104–106,
and after this, it flattens out as L/D increases from 10 to 20.
For higher Ra of 107 and 108, the decrease in Nu for the inner
surface would be asymptotic after an L/D of 20.
Nomenclature
At ¼ total area of convective surface, m2
D¼ diameter of vertical cylinder, m
g¼ acceleration due to gravity, m/s2
Gr ¼ Grashof number, gbDTL3 = 2
h¼ average convective heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K
k¼ thermal conductivity of fluid, W/m K
L¼ length of the cylinder, m
L/D ¼ ratio of length to diameter of cylinder
Greek Symbols
a ¼ thermal diffusivity, m2/s
b ¼ thermal expansion coefficient, 1/K
l ¼ dynamic viscosity, kg/m s
 ¼ kinematic viscosity, m2/s
q ¼ density, kg/m3
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