University of Duhok

College of Engineering

Mechanical Engineering Department

PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS
HEAT TRANSFER LABORATORY

Experiment No. (1): FREE CONVECTION (power and

temperature)

Prepared By: sherzad saadullah -Group (A)-

Assist. Prof.:Dr. Arkan Fawzi Saeed (Head of mech. Eng. Dept.)
Lecturer: Dr. Oday Adnan Abbo (Manager of Dept. Labs.)

INTRODUCTION

In this experiment we use the pinned or finned surface and we

change the power and we recording the temperature at the surface
and inlet temperature then find the different between them during
our experiment. The earlier experiments compare the effectiveness of
the heat transfer surfaces in free convection for a fixed power input.
They show the flat plate is not effective; reaching high temperatures
even with low power input. Therefore, to compare the surfaces at a
range of powers excludes the flat plate as a workable option. The
experiment uses either the Pinned or Finned surfaces, varying their
power input while recording the surface temperature to establish the
relationship between the two. This experiment can take approximately
35 minutes to stabilize at each power setting, so there may only be time
to test one of the suggested surfaces. The conclusions are the same for
both but the Finned surface has the lowest thermal mass, reaching
equilibrium quickest.
OBJECTIVE: -

To find the different at the temperature when we increase the

power on our surface (finned or pinned) surface at free convection

PROCEDURE

1- Take the heat transfer surface.

2- For our readings we create a table.
3- We start the process at the 0 power then during the process we
increase the power.
4- During the process we find the surface and inlet temperature
and the different between temperature.
5- Then repeat the procedure for other surface.
TABLE & CHART

Heat Transfer Surface: Finned / pinned

T2 T1 Differene
Power
Surface Duct Inlet (ambient) (Ts - Tin)
(Watt)
Ts (c) (c) (c)

0 17.4 15.9 1.5

10 34 16.9 17.1

20 46.4 17.4 29

30 59.4 17.7 41.7

40 71.8 17.8 54

50 83.8 18.1 65.7

Relation between power & Temperature difference

70

60

50
Temperature(Ts-Ti) (c)

40

30

20

10

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55

Power(watt)
RESULT

At the table, we take the inlet temperature and surface temperature

then we find the difference between them and we take the power in
the table. We draw the chart between the different temperatures
and power.

REFERENCE:

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_convection
 https://peer.asee.org/laboratory-experiment-in-the-free-convection-of-a-
vertical-heated-constant-temperature-plate-using-labview.pdf
 https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/heat-transfer/
convection-convective-heat-transfer/natural-convection-free-convection/
 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/convection-heat-
transfer#:~:text=Convection%20heat%20transfer%20is%20due%20to
%20the%20moving%20fluid.&text=Convection%20is%20the%20energy
%20transfer,bulk%20fluid%20motion%20(advection).