EFFECT OF SHAPE & ORIENTATION OF HEATED OBJECTS ON FREE CONVECTION IN POWER-LAW FLUIDS

Raj Chhabra+ Department of Chemical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India) ABSTRACT It is readily acknowledged that whenever there is a temperature gradient present in a fluid, heat transfer occurs from the region of high temperature to that of lower temperature both by free convection and by conduction. In moving fluids, heat transfer occurs by free and forced convection. As the Reynolds number of the externally imposed flow is progressively reduced, the contribution of free convection to the overall heat transfer gradually increases. In the limit of vanishing values of the Reynolds number, free convection is the sole convective mechanism for heat transfer in addition to conduction. Currently available analyses of free convection from a sphere or a cylinder in power-law fluids are based on the classical boundary layer treatments which invariably assume the boundary layers to be thin and with negligible curvature effects. These assumptions are tenable only in the limits of large values of Grashof (Gr ) and/or Prandtl (Pr ) numbers. Besides, such analyses are also not applicable in the wake region. On the other hand, most non-Newtonian fluids tend to be far more viscous than their Newtonian counterparts like air and water. It therefore stands to reason that the resulting values of the Grashof number (which is inversely proportional to the square of viscosity) are unlikely to be as large as that encountered in Newtonian fluids. On this count also, the aforementioned analyses are of little utility under these conditions. Finally, the boundary layer equations become intractable for complex body shapes (like elliptic cylinders) or that with sharp corners such as a square bar. We have therefore sought numerical solutions to the coupled momentum and energy equations within the framework of Boussinesq approximation to capture the temperaturedependence of the liquid density; all other thermo-physical properties are, however, assumed to be independent of temperature within the narrow range of temperature differences imposed in the system. The present results span wide ranges of Grashof number, Prandtl number and power- law index for a range of shapes including a sphere, a horizontal cylinder, elliptic cylinders of various cross-sections, a semi-circular cylinder and a square bar maintained at a constant temperature which is greater than that of the surrounding liquid. Extensive results on isotherm contours and streamline patterns and on Nusselt number are presented to delineate its scaling with Grashof number, Prandtl number and power-law index. Finally the present results are shown to be in good agreement with the scant experimental results available in this field. The talk is concluded by elucidating the role of shape and orientation of the heated object on free convection. The universal appeal of a composite parameter, akin to the Rayleigh number, in correlating the drag and Nusselt number results for a wide variety of 2-D axisymmetric shapes is demonstrated. + Presently a Visiting Professor at IIT Gandhinagar.