Natural Convective Heat Transfer from Two Adjacent Narrow Plates

Abstract

AbstractNumerical studies of the interaction of the natural convective flows over two adjacent vertical and inclined narrow isothermal flat plates in the laminar flow region are discussed. Two cases are considered. In one case, the plates are horizontally adjacent to each other, the plates being horizontally separated while in the other case, one plate is symmetrically placed above the other plate the plates being vertically separated. Attention has been given to the effects of the inclination angle of the plates to the vertical, to the effects of the vertical or horizontal dimensionless gap between the heated plates, and to the effects of the dimensionless plate width on the mean heat transfer rates from the two heated plates for a wide range of Rayleigh numbers. It is shown that when there are two adjacent narrow flat plates with a relatively small gap between the plates the flow near the adjacent plates is altered compared to that over a single narrow plate and this can lead to a significant change in the mean heat transfer rate compared to that from a single isolated plate under the same conditions. Empirical equations for both the case of horizontally separated and vertically separated plates are given.KeywordsNatural convectionTwo adjacent platesNarrow platesInclined platesIsothermal platesNumericalEmpirical equations