Aim:

Heat Transfer by Natural Convection

1. To determine the overall heat transfer coefficient at the surface of a given vertical metal
cylinder by the natural convection method.
2. To determine the value of Nusselt number.

Apparatus:
Natural Convection
Apparatus - a metal
cylinder fitted vertically
in a wooden
rectangular duct which
is open at the top and
the bottom (Fig 1). An
electric heater is
provided in the vertical
cylinder, which heats
the surface of the
cylinder. Heat is lost
from the cylinder to the
surrounding air by
natural convection,
because the air in
contact with the
cylinder gets heated and becomes less dense, causing it to rise. This in turn creates a
continuous flow of air upward in the duct. The temperature at the various locations on the
surface of the vertical cylinder and in the incoming and outgoing air is monitored with
thermocouples. The duct is made of wood because it is a poor conductor, so not much heat
will transfer from the air to the duct. Thus the duct will enhance air flow without introducing
another convective surface.

Theory:
Heat transfer theory seeks to predict the energy transfer that takes place between material
bodies as a result of temperature difference. This energy transfer is defined as heat. The
three modes by which heat can be transferred from one place to another are conduction,
convection and radiation.
It is well known that a hot plate of metal will cool faster when placed in front of a fan than
when placed in still air. With the fan, we say that the heat is convected away, and we call the
process convection heat transfer. Convection involves the transfer of heat by motion and
mixing of a fluid.
Forced convection happens when the fluid is kept in motion by an external means, such as a
turbine or a fan. Some examples of forced convection are stirring a mixture of ice and water,
blowing on the surface of coffee in a cup, orienting a car radiator to face airflow, etc.
Convection is called natural convection when motion and mixing of fluid is caused by density
variation resulting from temperature differences within the fluid. The density of fluid near the
hot surface is less than that of the colder fluid away from the heated surface, and gravity
creates a buoyant force which lifts the heated fluid upward.

In the case of conduction through a solid of area A and thickness L, heat flow is given by

(1)
Where ∆T is the temperature difference across the thickness L, and k is the thermal
conductivity of the object.

In the case of convection, the heat flow is proportional only to the surface area A of the
object,

(2)
-2 -1
Where h is the convective heat transfer coefficient (units Wm K ) which depends on the
shape and orientation of the object. ∆T is the temperature difference between the surface of
the object and the surrounding fluid.

Convection is an enhanced form of conduction, since the movement of the fluid helps carry
heat transferred by conduction, so one would expect some relation between h and k. If the
temperature of the cylinder is not much above that of the surrounding air, the moving fluid
can be approximated as a stationary layer having some characteristic thickness L. Comparing
equations (1) and (2), one immediately has the relation h = k/L. In fact, as the temperature
of the cylinder increases, fluid motion increases and becomes turbulent, whereupon the fluid
becomes more efficient at carrying heat, and h can turn out to be 10 2 – 104 times k/L.The
proportionality between h and k/L is called the Nusselt number N,

(4)
Where k is thermal conductivity of air and L is the characteristic length. Note that N is a
dimensionless quantity.

In our case, which does involve turbulent flow, we are interested in temperature variation
along the length of a metal cylinder, so we will take the characteristic length L to be the
length of the cylinder.

Applications:
Natural convection heat transfer is extensively used in the following areas of engineering:
1. Cooling of commercial high voltage electrical power transformers.
2. Heating of houses by electrical baseboard heaters.
3. Heat loss from steam pipe lines in power plants and heat gain in refrigerant pipe lines in
air conditioning applications.
4. Cooling of reactor cores in nuclear power plants, though often the coolant is driven by
pumps, resulting in more efficient heat transfer by forced convection.
5. Cooling of electronic devices (chips, transistors) by finned heat sinks, though a fan is often
present to augment the natural convection with forced convection.
Performing the Simulation:

Simulator Controls

1. Choose material - This can used to select the material for the metal cylinder.
2. Side of wooden box - Side of the outer wooden hollow rectangular box can be varied in
cm.
3. Height of wooden box - Height of the outer wooden hollow rectangular box can be
varied in cm.
4. Diameter of cylinder- Diameter of the vertical cylinder can be varied in cm.
5. Length of the cylinder - Length of the vertical cylinder can be varied in cm.
6. Thickness of cylinder - Thickness of the vertical cylinder can be varied in cm.
7. White knob - can be rotated by clicking the side arrows to adjust the voltage and
corresponding current, which can be used to calculate input power.
8. Power On - click to start the experiment.
9. Temperature indicator - used to read the temperature at the positions of the various
thermocouples. After a steady state is reached (when the timer shows 20 minutes), click the
arrows on either side of the knob to read temperatures T1 to T6 in degrees Celsius.

Procedure for Simulation

1. Choose a particular material to carry out the experiment.
2. Choose the height and side of the wooden box with the box sliders.
3. Adjust the diameter, length and thickness of the cylinder using the cylinder sliders.
4. Apply a particular voltage and corresponding current using white knob in the simulator.
5. Using temperature indicator, note the values of T1, T2, T3, T4, T5 and T6 and, using the
table and worksheet below, calculate the heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number.
6. Click show result to check your calculations. You can also enter your data in the worksheet
on the Simulator to check some of the intermediate quantities in the main calculations.

Procedure for Real lab

The procedure for a real lab is quite similar, except that the calculations can be extended to
include heat loss from the cylinder by radiation, which is often not negligible. For example, at
the highest temperatures seen in our simulation, the radiation heat loss would be
comparable to the convection heat loss, so only about half the electrical power input would
be lost by convection.
Calculations and Observations:

Power input to the heater,

= ………………….. W

Area of heat transfer,

2
= ……………….. m

∆T = Average temperature of the tube – Average temperature of the air

= ……………. °C

We have , and by definition

=...........................Wm-2K-1
and

= ..............................

Where k = 0.024 Wm-1K-1 is the thermal conductivity of air, and L is the length of the cylinder, set by
the slider (be sure to convert cm to meters).

Result
Heat transfer coefficient h =………………. Wm-2 K-1

Nusselt number N = .....................