Schlieren visualization of water natural convection in a vertical ribbed channel

Abstract

Schlieren techniques are valuable tools for the qualitative and quantitative visualizations of flows in a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines. A large number of schlieren systems have been developed and documented in the literature; majority of applications involve flows of gases, typically air. In this work, a schlieren technique is applied to visualize the buoyancy-induced flow inside vertical ribbed channels using water as convective fluid. The test section consists of a vertical plate made of two thin sheets of chrome-plated copper with a foil heater sandwiched between them; the external sides of the plate are roughened with transverse, square-cross-sectioned ribs. Two parallel vertical walls, smooth and unheated, form with the heated ribbed plate two adjacent, identical and asymmetrically heated, vertical channels. Results include flow schlieren visualizations with colour-band filters, reconstructions of the local heat transfer coefficient distributions along the ribbed surfaces and comparisons with past experiments performed using air as working fluid.