Magnified heat transfer from curved surfaces: A scaling prediction

Abstract

We report the first definitive Nusselt number scale of thermal boundary layers from curved surfaces characterized by the proposed non-dimensional curvature parameter ξ = R0/(HRa−1/4), where R0 denotes the radius of a curved surface, H denotes the corresponding finite height, and Ra denotes the global Rayleigh number of a virtual reference thermal boundary layer on a vertical flat surface. The Nusselt number scale is given by Nu ∼ ξ−1/5Ra1/4 in which Nu ∼ Ra1/4 is the scale for the flat surface case, revealing that curved thermal boundary layers could present times-of-magnitude larger heat flux with the curvature parameter being ξ ≪ 1. The velocity and thickness scales are also given by Vs∼R02/5Ra3/5H7/5κ and ΔT∼R01/5H4/5Ra1/5.