Heat Mass Transfer (2012) 48:21252131 DOI 10.

1007/s00231-012-1021-y

TECHNICAL NOTE

Mixed convection from an upward facing horizontal at plate: effect of conduction and radiation
D. Ahammad Basha S. Prasanna S. P. Venkateshan

Received: 27 January 2012 / Accepted: 19 May 2012 / Published online: 4 July 2012 Springer-Verlag 2012

Abstract Experiments have been conducted in a low speed horizontal wind tunnel to study the interaction of radiation and conduction on mixed convective heat transfer from an upward facing horizontal at plate in air. Differential interferometer has been used to measure local convective heat uxes. It has been observed that interaction between surface radiation and convection is signicant for a low thermal conductivity plate material. On the basis of the previous and current studies, it can be stated that the multi-mode interaction problem is an outcome of the nature of convective boundary layer. The interaction between different modes of heat transfer would remain similar irrespective of the nature of convection (free/mixed or forced). List of symbols Bi Biot number, hL/ks Br Brun number, ksfL Ra0:25 kt Dh g GrL h k L Channel hydraulic diameter, m Acceleration due to gravity, g = 9.81 m/s2 Grashof number, gbDTL3 =m2 Heat transfer coefcient due to convection, W/m2 K Thermal conductivity, W/m K Length of test plate, L = 0.05 m

q Re Ri t T DT U? x y

Heat ux, W/m2 Reynolds number, U?Dh/m Richardson number, GrL/Re2 Thickness of test plate, t = 0.003 m Temperature, K temperature excess Tw T1 ;  C Velocity of air in test-section, m/s Coordinate parallel to the air ow direction, m Coordinate normal to the ow direction, m

Greek symbols b Thermal expansion coefcient, 1/K e Hemispherical emissivity of the surface r Stefan Boltzmann constant, 5.67 9 10-8 W/m2 K4 Subscripts c Convective f Fluid s Solid w Wall ? Ambient avg Average r Radiative t Total

1 Introduction
D. Ahammad Basha S. Prasanna S. P. Venkateshan (&) Heat Transfer and Thermal Power Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai, India e-mail: spv@iitm.ac.in D. Ahammad Basha e-mail: bashaiitm@gmail.com S. Prasanna e-mail: prasannaswam@gmail.com

The convective heat transfer from a solid wall strongly depends on the temperature difference between the wall and the ambient. The surface temperature of the wall is inuenced by multitude of parameters such as thermal conductivity of the solid and surface radiation from the wall. Most of the studies on convection, for simplicity, assume an isothermal or uniform heat ux condition at the surface, which seldom is true in practice. In effect, the

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interaction of conjugate conduction within the solid and surface radiation with convection are neglected. Large number of experimental and numerical investigations on mixed convection from air [15] indicate that the local convective heat transfer coefcient is strongly dependent on the free stream velocity U1 and the temperature difference between the wall and free stream DT: It Gr has been recognized that Richardson number Ri Re2 is the parameter which characterizes whether a mixed convection is buoyancy dominated ow or not. The role of conjugate conduction on forced convective heat transfer was rst studied by Perelman [6]. Analytical solutions to laminar forced convection from a thin heat generating horizontal plate was provided. Luikov [7] analyzed forced convection from a horizontal heated plate of nite thickness with back side maintained at constant temperature, analytically using the integral method. It is observed that the surface temperature of the plate is strongly inuenced by the ratio of the thermal conductivities of solid and uid. He proposed design formulae to calculate Nu based on local Bruns number, Br which is the ratio of conductive resistance of the plate to the convective resistance of the boundary layer. Payvar [8] and Mossad [9] studied the same problem numerically and concluded that conjugate effects have to be considered for Br [ 0.15. Chida [10] extended the above problem to study the behavior of convective heat transfer with distance from the leading edge of the plate. It is seen that the at plate can be divided into two distinct regions based on the heat ux, steep variation of temperature near the leading edge and near uniform temperature variation further away from the leading edge. This effect has also been observed experimentally for conjugate natural convection from a heated vertical at plate [11]. The role of radiation on laminar forced convection has been acknowledged by many of the investigators. Cess [12] studied the role of radiation on a surface having uniform heat ux analytically and has stated radiation inuence may be extremely severe for laminar ow but is of less importance for turbulent forced convection. Sohal and Howell [13] considered a heat generating thin plate losing heat to ambient by forced convection and radiation numerically. Their results are in good agreement with observations made by Cess. In addition to this, they remarked of existence of sharp temperature gradients near the leading edge of the plate. They also studied the role of conduction on surface temperature of the plate and found that the neglect of axial conduction can cause serious error in heat transfer calculations. The importance of radiation on mixed and forced convection has also been shown by other investigators for different ow geometries. The heat transfer via radiation can account for about 40 % of the total heat transfer in such cases. A good review of the

interaction of radiation on convection for various geometries has been provided by Balaji and Venkateshan [14]. From the literature it is clear that surface radiation and conjugate conduction effects are important for analyzing laminar convection ows. However, there is lack of studies (apart from Sohal and Howell) investigating the combined role of conjugate conduction and surface radiation on laminar mixed/forced convection. The role of conjugate convection and surface radiation on mixed convection systems are important in applications such as electronic cooling. Recently, Sabareesh et al. [11] have investigated the importance of surface radiation and conjugate conduction from a heated vertical at plate losing heat by laminar natural convection to the ambient. It is seen that surface radiation alters the local and total convective heat transfer signicantly, for a low thermal conductivity material. The present study is an extension of the aforementioned study to investigate the role of surface radiation on conjugate heat transfer from a heated horizontal plate under mixed convection regimes. The interest in the study arises from the fact that forced/mixed convection have larger heat transfer rates compared to free convection heat transfer and radiation convection interaction may not be signicant in these cases. Another point the paper likes to address is the coupling between convective and radiative heat transfer. If radiation convection coupling is strong, radiation and convection have to be considered simultaneously in numerical solvers where as for weak coupling, the two modes can be treated independently and simple summation of the two modes leads to total heat transfer. For a heat source losing heat by radiation and convection, both modes compete with each other and it is expected that contribution of radiation to total heat transfer would be substantial based on the equilibrium temperature of the heat source. This is a point which has consistently been shown by several researchers in the past and the present work does agree with the literature. But the present paper treats another important question on how presence of radiation alters the nature of convective heat ux, through experimental investigations.

2 Experimental setup A schematic of the experimental set up used for the mixed convection experiments is shown in Fig. 1. A low speed horizontal wind tunnel has been used to maintain laminar ow over a heated at plate assembly. All parts of wind tunnel have been designed and fabricated according to the guidelines given in [15, 16]. The cross-section of the wind tunnel test section is of dimension 175 9 175 mm. The at plate assembly is ush with bottom wall of the test section. A circular through hole of diameter 160 mm is bored on

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Heat Mass Transfer (2012) 48:21252131 Fig. 1 Schematic of experimental setup showing 1 air dehumidier, 2 control valve, 3 rotameter, 4 diffuser, 5 settling chamber, 6 nozzle, 7 test section with at plate assembly, 8 differential interferometer and 9 computer controlled digital camera

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Fig. 2 Test plate assembly showing 1 horizontal at plate with K-type thermo couples, 2 heater element and 3 cork substrate with milled groove

the bottom wall of the test section, to insert the cylindrical at plate assembly. The circular hole facilitates the adjustment of orientation of the at plate assembly with respect to the ow direction. Further, to reduce heat losses from heated at plate assembly, the bottom wall of the test section is made of bakelite (k = 0.22 W/m K). Optical quality glass windows have been provided on other sides of the test section in order to facilitate the use of Differential interferometer (DI). The at plate assembly used in the experiments consists of a test plate, heater element and a cylindrical substrate as shown in Fig. 2. The test plate is of 50 mm length along the ow direction, 3 mm thickness and depth of 147 mm perpendicular to direction of ow. The aspect ratio of the test plate has been chosen such that edge effects are

minimum and hence two dimensionality of ow can be assumed. It is intended to have insulated boundary conditions at the plate substrate interface and in order to achieve this, cork (k = 0.05 W/m K) has been used as substrate material in all the experiments. The heater element is a nichrome winding placed between two thin mica sheets providing electrical insulation from the test plate. The pitch of the winding is small (5 mm) such that one can expect almost uniform heat ux through out the plate. The nichrome wires are placed along the ow direction. It is expected the heat ux variation along the direction of ow is uniform, where as there would be small non uniformity in heat ux in the transverse direction. However, the heat ux variation in the transverse direction would be small due to the small pitch. As, the interferometer interrogates along the transverse direction of the plate, the mean of the non-uniform heat ux is recorded and hence transverse non-uniformity in heat ux is smeared out. This has been independently conrmed from the experiments on natural convection, where the temperature and heat ux proles were found to be in agreement with the benchmark solution for an iso-ux surface [11]. Therefore, the heater used can be treated as a constant heat ux surface. The test plate and heater element are placed inside a milled groove on the cork substrate, such that the surface of the test plate is perfectly ush with the substrate. Small blind holes (2 mm depth) are drilled on the back side of the test plate which are located at different positions along the ow direction. Calibrated K-type thermocouples are placed inside these blind holes and are cemented using a highly conducting copper paste. The thermocouples are distributed throughout the plate to get a detailed temperature map of the plate. Temperature readings are available at 10 points along the ow direction of the plate. Figure 3 indicates the locations

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Fig. 3 Test plate with locations of thermocouple measurements

of the thermocouples on the plate. The test plate and heater are fastened to the substrate by using countersunk screws in order to avoid disturbances to ow. The free stream temperature is measured using a separate calibrated thermocouple placed inside the test-section, kept sufciently far away from the zone of inuence of the heated plate assembly. All temperatures are recorded using a personal computer based data acquisition system (Agilent 34970A). The power input to the heater is supplied from a regulated DC power source (Densei-Lambda GEN 750 W). A DI is used for measuring the local convective heat ux. The working principle of DI has been reported by Sabareesh et al. [11]. The at plate assembly is positioned in the test section such that the length of the plate (50 mm) is parallel to the direction of ow and depth of the plate (147 mm) is parallel to the optical axis of the interferometer. Therefore, when the coherent light from the interferometer passes through the test section along the depth of the plate (147 mm), thermal gradients normal to the plate are captured. A typical interferogram from a heated horizontal at plate is shown in Fig. 4. The temperature gradients in the vicinity of the heated plate causes the normally vertical fringes to deect. The amount of deection of the fringes from the normal position is directly proportional to the convective heat ux from the surface. The interferograms are captured using a computer controlled digital camera [Canon Power Shot SX110]. The eld of view of the present optical setup is approximately a circle of diameter equal to 9.6 cm. Digital interferogram analysis has been performed to estimate the local convective heat ux from the test plate. The details of the interferogram analysis has been reported in [11].

As the interest of the present work is on mixed convection, low velocity range between 0.02 and 0.3 m/s and temperature difference ranging between DT Tw T1 10 to 100 K, has been covered. This range has been selected such that the DI can accurately capture the heat transfer phenomena. Even so, for high plate temperatures and ow velocities, the temperature gradients near the leading edge are too high to be measured accurately. Such points have been neglected in the entire analysis. The uncertainty in heat ux measurement for the range of experiments covered is found to be less than 10 %. The low velocity in the wind tunnel has been achieved by using compressed air from a 500 l storage tank. The storage tank acts as a buffer and suppresses undesirable ow uctuations. The velocity in the wind tunnel is controlled with the help of a needle valve. A dehumidier is used to remove moisture from the air owing through the rotameter. The ow rate inside the wind tunnel test section is measured using a calibrated rotameter (accuracy of 2 % fsd). All the experiments have been conducted under steady state condition, which is assumed to be achieved when the variation in all the temperatures measured is\0:1  C over a period of 10 min.

3 Results and discussion The experiments have been performed for three different materials of the plate, namely aluminium (k = 225 W/ m K), mild steel (k = 44 W/m K) and bakelite (k = 0.22 W/m K) covering a broad range of thermal conductivities. Aluminium being a high thermal conductivity material, the temperature of the plate is expected to be uniform and isothermal approximation can be easily assumed. On the other hand, bakelite being a low thermal conductivity material, conjugate effects will be important. The surfaces of the test plate is either painted black (Asian paints) (e 0:85) or covered with a low emissivity aluminium foil (e 0:05) [11]. In the case of aluminum the surface was buffed to obtain a low emissivity that was the same as that for aluminum foil. The experimental (ow velocity and temperature of plate) conditions are chosen such that Differential interferometer can accurately capture the heat ux at the wall. Based on this, experiments have been conducted for different Re (75350) and Gr (1 9 105 to 5 9 105). Radiative heat ux from the plate has been estimated using irradiation radiosity formulation. The heated plate is exposed to surroundings, whose temperatures have been independently measured. Assuming the surface of the plate is diffuse, the radiative heat ux at a given point of the plate can be estimated as

Fig. 4 A typical interferogram; the convective heat ux at the wall is proportional to DX DY

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Fig. 7 Effect of plate conduction: Ri = 0.37, low emissivity Fig. 5 Local convective heat transfer distribution for Aluminium buff and black surfaces for different temperature excess, at Re = 75

Fig. 6 Temperature variation along plate x, at Re = 75 for low emissivity surface. Bakelite (lled circle), mild steel (lled square) and aluminium (lled triangle) with cork substrate, and aluminium (open triangle) with bakelite substrate

4 4 qr erTw T1

As the temperatures are measured at discrete points, a polynomial curve has been tted to the temperature data and the t has been used to estimate both radiative and convective heat ux. Figure 5 shows the local convective heat ux measured for aluminium plate for different experimental conditions. It is seen that radiation has no effect on the local convective heat ux from an aluminium plate. This is an expected result as aluminium being a high thermal conductivity material, the plate is nearly isothermal. The temperature variation of aluminium with cork as substrate is found to be less than 1  C (Fig. 6). As convective heat ux is a function of temperature alone, radiation does not alter the local convective heat ux and hence total convective heat ux from the plate. In other words, it can be said total heat transfer from the plate can be calculated by simply summing up the contributions of convection and radiation without the need for solving complicated coupled equations of radiation and convection.

However, assuming aluminium plate to be isothermal may not be true always. Figure 6 shows temperature variation along the length of the plate for different plate and substrate materials. It can be seen that, when bakelite is used as substrate material, even an aluminium plate does not exhibit uniform temperature. The same is true for other materials. Bakelite plate produced large temperature variations along the plate for all the experiments. The variation in surface temperature affects the local convective heat transfer from the plate. Figure 7 shows local convective heat ux variation for bakelite and aluminium for Ri = 0.37 in both cases. It is clear from the gure that, aluminium plate is able to dissipate more amount of heat through convection than a plate made of bakelite. The convective heat ux for aluminium is very high near the leading edge where as the variation of convective heat ux for bakelite is atter akin to uniform heat ux condition. It has to be noted that, the local heat ux distributions are for the same average temperature. The important conclusion is that a high thermal conductivity material can dissipate more heat through convection than a low thermal conductivity material. Figure 8 shows the comparison of local convective heat ux from bakelite for different Ri between black and foil surface. Radiation affects local convective heat ux signicantly all along the plate. The results are consistent for

Fig. 8 Convective heat ux distributions for bakelite at two different Ri

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Fig. 10 Physical model and coordinate system

Fig. 9 Variation of radiation fraction with respect to Richardson number, for black surface condition and different plate materials

as shown in Fig. 10. Radiation is assumed to be diffuse and gray which is a good approximation for the surfaces considered. The test plate interacts radiatively with other opaque walls of the test section which are at ambient temperature. Therefore, the steady state governing equation for the above physical model can be written as ks t d2 T 4 4 hc T1 Tw erT1 Tw Qgen t 0 dx2 2 The plate can be assumed to be insulated on other sides as indicated in the gure. Although, this is not achievable in experiments, the amount of heat loss along the lateral direction through substrate material is sufciently small. Moreover, as interferometer is used in the present work for measuring heat ux distribution, experiments have been carried out by varying the average temperature of the plate. Therefore, the above physical model mimics a heat generating plate losing heat to the ambient by surface radiation and convection. It has to be noted here that the role of conduction within the plate is to redistribute the heat along the plate and hence inuence the local convective heat transfer and surface temperature alone. Near the leading edge, the convective heat ux is exceptionally high compared to the heat generated near the leading edge. The excess heat is supplied through conduction from hotter regions away from the leading edge of the plate. Hence, the temperature of the leading edge depends on the thermal conductance (kst) of the plate. Aluminium being a good thermal conductor maintains high convective heat ux near the leading edge. However, bakelite being a poor thermal conductor does not sustain such high heat ux and the temperatures at the leading edge are much lower. Hence aluminium behaves like an isothermal plate where as bakelite plate resembles a constant convective heat ux surface. It can be understood that surface radiation and convection are two competitive modes of heat transfer. Hence, the coupling between radiation and convection becomes important for a low thermal conductive material where as for a high thermal conductive material, the coupling between the two modes of heat transfer is only on global heat balance.

all the experiments conducted on bakelite. The local convective heat ux reduces signicantly in presence of radiation at the same average temperature. The local variation of temperature along the bakelite also reduces by a small amount in the presence of radiation. Radiation tends to suppress convective heat transfer. This is because of the poor ability of a low thermal conductivity material to dissipate heat by convection. This means that interaction between radiation and convection is important for a low thermal conductivity material. When analyzing heat transfer from a low thermal conductivity material coupled equations for radiation and convection have to be solved simultaneously, unlike a case of high thermal conductivity material like aluminium. Figure 9 indicates the fraction of heat transfer through radiation. Radiation contributes about 4060 % of the total heat transfer in the experiments considered. The contribution of radiation is more for high Ri where buoyancy forces are important and steadily decreases with Ri. It can also be observed that contribution of radiation for bakelite is more than that for aluminium. Also, it is seen that for small Ri, the contribution of radiation to total heat transfer reduces and it may be stated that as we move towards forced convection radiative heat transfer may become less signicant. The above observations are similar to the case of multi-mode heat transfer from a vertical at plate under natural convection [11]. The results from the experiments will be understood with the help of a simplied physical model. The physical model and the coordinate system considered are as shown in Fig. 10. The thickness of the plate (3 mm) considered in the present study is very small compared to the length of the plate so that the Biot Number (Bi = htt/ks) in the lateral direction is always \0.1 and hence the temperature variation across the thickness can be assumed as negligible. Considering the plate to be lumped in the lateral direction, heat ux can be modeled as an equivalent heat generation

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As mixed convection regimes have higher convective heat uxes compared to free convection, it may be expected that radiation interaction may be a weak or non-existent. However, contrary to this radiation is seen to play an important role in deciding the convective heat ux for a low thermal conductivity material. If one pays a close attention to the nature of interaction between different modes of heat transfer, the present deduction is hardly surprising. Irrespective of the mode of convection, the nature of the convective boundary layer underpins the interaction [11]. As the convective heat ux values are very high near the leading edge, conduction within the plate becomes important in these regions and the longitudinal temperature gradients near the leading edge may be high depending on the thermal conductivity of the plate. Although the experiments have been performed in the mixed convection regime, the present arguments can be easily extended to a forced convection regime. However, contribution of radiative heat transfer may be smaller for forced convection when compared to free and mixed convection regimes. It may be noted that all the experiments that have been performed have temperature recordings not greater than 100  C and the present results have a lot of bearing on experiments and numerical investigations performed in these regimes. It is a general practice in the heat transfer community to treat radiation as a perturbation rather than as a serious candidate of thermal transport. Often while performing experiments, radiation term is treated as a source of error and are eliminated. But one cannot overlook the fact that radiation could alter the nature of convective heat transfer and hence mere subtracting radiative contribution may not portray the true picture.

strong temperature gradients near the leading edge. Therefore, irrespective of the type of convection, radiation will strongly inuence convective heat transfer from low thermal conductivity materials. However, the relative signicance of radiation may reduce as we move from free convection towards forced convection.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Mr. Mani, Mr. Narsimhan and Mr. Sagaya Rajesh for helping in construction of wind tunnel and test section.

References
1. Sparrow E, Minkowycz W (1962) Buoyancy effects on horizontal boundary-layer ow and heat transfer. Int J Heat Mass Transf 5(6):505511 2. Hieber C (1973) Mixed convection above a heated horizontal surface. Int J Heat Mass Transf 16(4):769785 3. Wang X (1982) An experimental study of mixed, forced, and free convection heat transfer from a horizontal at plate to air. J Heat Transf 104:139 4. Oosthuizen P, Bassey M (1973) An experimental study of combined forced- and free-convective heat transfer from at plates to air at low Reynolds numbers. ASME, Transactions, Series C-Journal of Heat Transfer 95:120 5. Chen T, Armaly B, Ramachandran N (1986) Correlations for laminar mixed convection ows on vertical, inclined, and horizontal at plates. J Heat Transf 108:835 6. Perelman T (1963) About conjugate heat transfer problems. Heat Mass Transf 5:7993 7. Luikov A (1974) Conjugate convective heat transfer problems. Int J Heat Mass Transf 17(2):257265 8. Payvar P (1977) Convective heat transfer to laminar ow over a plate of nite thickness. Int J Heat Mass Transf 20(4):431433 9. Mosaad M (1999) Laminar forced convection conjugate heat transfer over a at plate. Heat Mass Transf 35(5):371375 10. Chida K (2000) Surface temperature of a at plate of nite thickness under conjugate laminar forced convection heat transfer condition. Int J Heat Mass Transf 43(4):639642 11. Krishna Sabareesh R, Prasanna S, Venkateshan SP (2010) Investigations on multimode heat transfer from a heated vertical plate. J Heat Transf 132(3):032501.18 12. Cess R (1961) The effect of radiation upon forced-convection heat transfer. Appl Sci Res 10(1):430438 13. Sohal M, Howel J (1973) Determination of plate temperature in case of combined conduction, convection and radiation heat exchange. Int J Heat Mass Transf 16(11):20552066 14. Venkateshan SP, Balaji C (2006) Experimental and numerical studies on interaction of radiation with other modes of heat transfer. In: Annals of the Assembly for International Heat Transfer Conference 13 (Sydney, Australia, 2006) 15. Mehta R, Bradshaw P (1979) Design rules for small low speed wind tunnels. Aeronaut J 83(827):443449 16. Barlow J, Rae W, Pope A (1999) Low-speed wind tunnel testing. Wiley, New York

4 Conclusions Experiments have been conducted on a heated horizontal plate under mixed convection regime with different plate thermal conductivities and surface emissivities. Radiative heat transfer is very important in mixed convection regime. Radiation can contribute to about 4060 % of the total heat transfer for a highly emissive surface. The contribution of radiation decreases with increase in free stream velocity. Radiation has to be coupled with convective heat transfer solver, when analyzing a low thermal conductivity material as both local temperature and local convective heat ux are affected by radiation. The interaction of radiation and convection is due to the characteristics of the convective boundary layer which has

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