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Experiment1_Lab_Sheet

The document outlines an experiment for measuring the natural convective heat transfer rate from horizontal cylinders, detailing the objective, theory, experimental setup, procedure, calculations, and reporting requirements. It explains the principles of natural convection, the setup involving aluminum cylinders and thermocouples, and the calculations needed to determine heat transfer rates and coefficients. The report should include discussions on results, errors, and assumptions made during the experiment.

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Serdar Dilmen
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Experiment1_Lab_Sheet

The document outlines an experiment for measuring the natural convective heat transfer rate from horizontal cylinders, detailing the objective, theory, experimental setup, procedure, calculations, and reporting requirements. It explains the principles of natural convection, the setup involving aluminum cylinders and thermocouples, and the calculations needed to determine heat transfer rates and coefficients. The report should include discussions on results, errors, and assumptions made during the experiment.

Uploaded by

Serdar Dilmen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ME 312 HEAT TRANSFER

EXPERIMENT 1
2024-2025 SPRING SEMESTER

NATURAL CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER RATE FROM


HORIZONTAL CYLINDERS

OBJECTIVE

Natural convection is a mechanism, or type of heat transfer, in which the fluid motion is not
generated by any external source (like a pump, fan, suction device, etc.), but only by density
differences in the fluid occurring due to temperature gradients. In natural convection, fluid
surrounding a heat source receives heat, becomes less dense and rises. The surrounding, cooler
fluid then moves to replace it. This cooler fluid is then heated and the process continues, forming
a convective current. The purpose of the experiment is to determine the rate of convective heat
transfer from heated horizontal cylinders.

THEORY

When a horizontal cylinder of sphere with temperature Tw is immersed in a fluid with


temperature T∞ ( Tw > T∞), a boundary layer develops along the curved surface. The boundary
layer thickness is a function of the angle 𝜑 (𝜑 = 0° at the bottom of a cylinder) as shown in
Figure 1. The similarity solution that worked for the case of the vertical plate does not work for
natural convection over a horizontal cylinder or sphere. The results obtained by integral
methods, assuming the momentum and thermal boundary layer thicknesses are identical show
that the local Nusselt number is highest at the bottom where the boundary layer is thinnest. As
the angle φ increases, the thickness of the boundary layer increases and the local Nusselt number
decreases. Although the integral solution can yield results all the way to the top where 𝜑 = 180°
𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑁𝑢𝜑 = 0, the result beyond 𝜑 = 165° is no longer applicable because boundary layer
separation occurred and plume flow takes place. Based on the integral solution, Morgan
[1] recommended the following empirical correlation for natural convection over a horizontal
cylinder.

Where the characteristic length, in the average Nusselt number and Rayleigh number, is the
diameter of the cylinder, D. Practically, the empirical correlations based on experimental results
are more useful. Churchill and Chu [2] recommended the following correlation for horizontal
cylinders:
This has the same form as the correlation for vertical plate, except the characteristic length has
been changed from vertical plate height to the diameter of the cylinder. Eq. (2) covers all Prandtl
number and Rayleigh number between and 0.1 to 1012.

Figure 1. Boundary layer for natural convection over horizontal cylinder

EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT AND INSTRUMENTATION

The components of the experimental set-up include 6 horizontal cylinders and various
instruments for measuring the cylinders temperature, ambient temperature, and power supply
for the heater. View of the experimental set-up is presented in Figure 2. The length of the
horizontal cylinders is about 300 mm. The outer diameter of the cylinders is ranging from 40
mm to 20 mm. The inner diameter of the cylinders is ranging from 37.2 mm to 15 mm. The
cylinders material is chosen as aluminum because of its high thermal conductivity. A nichrome
wire heater passes through the inside of the cylinders. The cylinders are mounted on a frame,
which is 910 mm above the ground to prevent ground effects. The ends of the cylinder are
insulated in order to prevent the side effects. The electrical power is supplied by a regulated AC
supply and the output of the supply is fed to a variable transformer to select the necessary
heating level. The power input is measured by a calibrated wattmeter. To verify the
measurements of the wattmeter, a voltmeter-ammeter combination is used. The cylinders
surface temperatures are measured at three points along the surface of each horizontal cylinder
using copper-constantan thermocouples. The thermocouples have been calibrated prior to the
experiment and a digital multi-meter with a resolution of a hundredth of a microvolt is used
with a selector switch in order to obtain the thermocouple voltage readings. The ambient
temperature is measured with mercury in glass thermometer, which has one tenth of a degree
precision. The ambient temperature and cylinder surface temperatures are measured at three
points using copper-constant thermocouples and the average of these three readings is taken as
the surface temperature. These three thermocouple readings are expected not to deviate much
from each other.
Figure 2. View of the experimental set-up

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

 Keep the Continuously Variable Voltage Auto-Transformer at the lowest position.


 Switch ON the electric supply.
 Adjust the Continuously Variable Voltage Auto-Transformer to supply a particular voltage
to the heating element.
 Wait for steady state to be attained (Steady state condition will be assumed to be reached
when readings taken at thirty-minute intervals do not vary by more than half-a-degree).
 Note the voltage and current supplied to the heating element.
 Note the size of the plate.
 Note the location of by the thermocouples at the outer surfaces of each cylinder.
 Note the temperature indicated by the thermocouples at the outer surfaces of each cylinder.
 Note the temperature of the room T.

CALCULATIONS

 Heat transfer area of each cylinders A


 Rate of heat transfer through each cylinders Q0
 Rate of heat transfer per unit area through each cylinders q0  Q0 / A
 Surface temperatures of the cylinders Tw (The cylinder surface temperatures are measured
at three points. The average of these three readings will be taken as the surface temperature.)
 Rate of convective heat transfer per unit area through each cylinder (Heat is transferred to
the surroundings by natural convection and radiation. Radiation heat transfer rate from the
horizontal cylinder can calculated by considering the environment as a blackbody at ambient
as,
 Emissivity of the cylinder ε, can be taken as 0.031. The measured value is between the
limits provided for aluminum in literature. The convective heat transfer rate from a
cylinder can be determined by subtracting radiation heat transfer rate from rate of heat
transfer through each cylinder as,

 Heat transfer coefficient based on the outer surface area of the cylinder

𝑔𝛽𝐷3(𝑇𝑤−𝑇∞)
 Rayleigh number 𝑅𝑎 = , and experimental Nusselt number, 𝑁𝑢 ℎ
= 𝑒𝑥𝑝 ,
𝐷
𝑣𝛼 𝑒𝑥𝑝 𝑘
for each cylinder. (Rayleigh and Nusselt numbers should be evaluated at film temperature,
average of wall and ambient temperature, and D is the outer diameter of the cylinders.)
 Fitting a trend line, obtain an expression for the variation of 𝑁𝑢𝑒𝑥𝑝 with 𝑅𝑎 similar to the
eqn. 1
 Taking the Prandtl number constant, plot the expressions in Eqn. 1, Eqn. 2 and expression
you found before on a single figure, compare them and comment

REPORT
In your report
1. Comment on the results and possible reasons for discrepancies,
2. Discuss the possible sources of errors in the experiment,
3. Discuss the assumptions made during the experiment and their effects on the results
in detail.

REFERENCES
1. Morgan,V.T., “The Overall Convective Heat Transfer from Smooth Circular Cylinders”,
In T.F.Irvine and J.P.Hartneet Eds., Advances in Transfer, Vol.11 Academic Press, New
York , 1975 pp.199-264
2. Churchill, SW., and Chu, H,H,S .,“ Correlating Equations for Laminar and Turbulent
Free Convection”, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol.18 pp 1049, 1975
3. Bejan, A., Convective Heat Transfer , Wiley, New York, 1984
4. Ching-Jen, C. and Shenq-Yuh, J., Fundamentals of Turbulence Modeling, Taylor &
Francis Publications, New York, 1998.
5. Cebeci, T. and Smith, A.M.O.: Analysis of Turbulent Boundary Layers.Academic
Press, 1974.
DATA SHEET

T1 (mV) Tamb (°𝐶)


T2 (mV) Voltage1 (V)
T3 (mV) Current1 (amp)
T4 (mV) Voltage2 (V)
T5 (mV) Current2 (amp)
T6 (mV)
T7 (mV)
T8 (mV)
Conversion from mV to
T9 (mV)
T10 (mV) Celcius:(𝑚𝑉)=
T11 (mV)
23.46𝑚𝑉+2.35
T12 (mV)
T13 (mV)
T14 (mV)
T15 (mV)
T16 (mV)
T17 (mV)
T18 (mV)

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