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Natural convection far downstream of a heat source on a solid wall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 1998

F. J. HIGUERA
Affiliation:
ETS Ingenieros Aeronáuticos, Plaza Cardenal Cisneros 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain
P. D. WEIDMAN
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 USA

Abstract

An analysis is presented of some steady natural convection flows at large distances downstream of point heat sources on solid walls. These asymptotic self-similar flows depend only on the Prandtl number of the fluid. The flow induced by a localized source on an adiabatic wall that is vertical or facing downwards is described numerically, whereas the flow due to a localized source on a wall facing upwards separates and leads to a self-similar plume. When the wall is held at the same temperature as the ambient fluid far from the source, the flow is described by a self-similar solution of the second kind, with the algebraic decay of the temperature excess above the ambient temperature determined by a nonlinear eigenvalue problem. Numerical solutions of this problem are presented for two-dimensional and localized heat sources on a vertical wall, whereas the problem for a localized heat source under an inclined isothermal downwards-facing wall turns out to capture the Rayleigh–Taylor instability of the flow and could not be solved by the methods used in this paper. The analogous flows in fluid-saturated porous media are found to be the solutions of parameter-free problems. A conservation law similar to the one holding for a wall jet is found in the case of a two-dimensional source on an isothermal wall and numerical solutions are presented for the other cases.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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