Free convection heat transfer from an isothermal plate with arbitrary inclination

Abstract

This paper presents a new formulation for the laminar free convection from an arbitrarily inclined isothermal plate to fluids of any Prandtl number between 0.001 and infinity. A novel inclination parameterξ is proposed such that all cases of the horizontal, inclined and vertical plates can be described by a single set of transformed equations. Moreover, the self-similar equations for the limiting cases of the horizontal and vertical plates are recovered from the transformed equations by settingξ=0 andξ=1, respectively. Heated upward-facing plates with positive and negative inclination angles are investigated. A very accurate correlation equation of the local Nusselt number is developed for arbitrary inclination angle and for 0.001 ≦Pr ≦∞.