Experimental correlation of natural convection in low Rayleigh atmospheres for vertical plates and comparison between CFD and lumped parameter analysis

Abstract

This paper offers a comprehensive exploration of thermal analysis for space systems operating in low Rayleigh atmospheres, with a primary focus on enhancing the accuracy and reliability of convective heat transfer modeling. The study centers around an analysis of a vertical heated plate experiment, where a lumped parameter model is employed to encompass conductive, radiative, and convective heat transfer mechanisms. To advance the accuracy of convective heat transfer coefficient calculations, this paper introduces a novel approach involving the utilization of Nusselt number correlations. These correlations are developed through an analytical solution derived from the Navier-Stokes equations, tailored specifically for the internal natural convection problem. This approach treats convection as a heat exchange process between the heated plate and the surrounding air, thereby improving the precision of modeling internal convection within a lumped parameter framework. A specific correlation (González-Bárcena et al.) is obtained for the proposed problem, derived from experimental tests conducted in a thermal vacuum chamber, under varying pressure conditions to control the Rayleigh number. Additionally, the findings are validated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools to calculate the velocity and temperature fields within the cavity. The González-Bárcena et al. correlation significantly enhances temperature predictions, demonstrating an improvement of up to 10∘C when compared to conventional literature correlations. The methodology presented in this paper holds promise for extension to more complex experiments in low Rayleigh atmospheres, including those conducted in the Earth's stratosphere or on the Martian surface, thereby contributing to the advancement of thermal analysis in challenging space environments.