)1941-1856( Leo Graetz

Born : September 26, 1856 in Breslau, Germany

Died: November 12, 1941 in Munchen, Germany

Leo Graetz was a German Physicist. He studied Mathematics and Physics at

Breslau, Berlin and Strassburg. In 1881, he became the assistant to A. Kundt at
Strassburg and in 1883 he went to the University of Munchen where he became a
Professor in 1908 and occupied the Second Chair for Physics parallel to Roentgen.
His scientific work was first concerned with the fields of heat conduction,
radiation, friction and elasticity. After 1890, his work forcused upon problems of
Graetz was a prolific technical writer as .electromagnetic waves and cathode rays
evidenced by his twenty-three editions of book Electricity and Its Applications and
a five volume work Handbook of Electricity and Magnetism. These works
contributed to the wide dissemination of knowledge in electricity which, at their
.time of printing, was still in its infancy
The Graetz number, Gz, is a nondimensional group applicable mainly to transient
heat conduction in laminar pipe flow. It is defined as

where U is the velocity of the fluid, D the diameter of the pipe, the fluid thermal
diffusivity (/cp) and x the axial distance along the pipe.
Gz represents the ratio of the time taken by heat to diffuse radially into the fluid by
conduction (sometimes called the "relaxation time"), D2/, to the time taken for the
fluid to reach distance x, x/U, i.e.,

For small values of Gz (Gz < 20) radial temperature profiles are fully developed, but
for larger values thermal boundary layer development has to be taken into account.
Note that

and Gz1 is often used as a nondimensional form of axial distance in the

representation of entrance effects on laminar flow heat transfer.
Graetz number is the reciprocal of Fourier number with time replaced by x/U, and
many of the equations fortransient heat conduction in laminar pipe flow are
analogous to those of transient heat conduction in cylinders.

In fluid dynamics, the Graetz number (Gz) is a dimensionless number that

characterizes laminar flow in a conduit. The number is defined as:[1]
 Where:
DH is the diameter in round tubes or hydraulic diameter in arbitrary cross-
section ducts
L is the length
Re is the Reynolds number and
Pr is the Prandtl number.
This number is useful in determining the thermally developing flow entrance length
in ducts. A Graetz number of approximately 1000 or less is the point at which flow
would be considered thermally fully developed.[2]
When used in connection with mass transfer the Prandtl number is replaced by
the Schmidt number, Sc, which expresses the ratio of the momentum diffusivity to
the mass diffusivity.

The quantity is named after the physicist Leo Graetz.

The Graetz problem is a fundamental tube flow problem that couples fluid flow
with heat and/or mass transfer. It is critically important in dealing with chemical
reactors, heat exchangers, blood flow and a host of other phenomena. A nice
aspect of it is that there is an analytical solution to the problem for laminar flow,
both developing and fully developed. An analytical solution for turbulent flow
does not yet exist, but we can investigate turbulence effects in Comsol.
 The analytical solution for fully developed hydrodynamics and developing
thermal profiles depends upon the Graetz number that defines the decay rate of the
initial inlet temperature. The Graetz number is:

and the decay rate goes as:

where l is an eigenvalue and z is the dimensionless axial distance down the

tube. By the time the Graetz number falls below 20, we have fully developed
profiles as the figure below shows.

Figure 1 Leo Graetz (1856-1941). Sherwood number as a function of the Graetz

number for developing mass transfer in a tube. The same trends are observed if
the Sherwood number is replaced by the Nusselt number.