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Turbulent natural convection in rectangular air cavities

The velocity and temperature fields of several air cavities have been surveyed. The cavities operated in the transitional boundary layer regime with vertical, opposing, isothermal heated and cooled walls. The cavity height, width, temperature difference and wall insulation were all changed during the study, with the aspect ratio varying from 4 to 10, and RaH varying from 2,263x10 to 4.486x101e. The local velocity and temperature were measured simultaneously using a laser Doppler anemometer and a 25jim chromel-alumel thermocouple. This allowed the turbulence quantity tT to be measured directly, as well as the mean and root mean square of the fluctuations of velocity and temperature. Several other quantities, which have not previously been available, were derived from the measured data, these were the wall shear stress, the mean lateral velocity, u'v', and v'T'. The effect of a decrease of the level of insulation on the vertical walls was to decrease the non-dimensional temperature of the fluid at the vertical centre-line. Different thermal boundary conditions on the horizontal walls resulted in significant differences between the heated and cooled wall, thermal and velocity, boundary layers. A decrease in the cavity width was seen to alter the characteristics of the mean velocity and temperature profiles when the width was less than twice the lateral extent of either boundary layer in a cavity with a larger width. Near wall distributions of u'v' have shown that the viscous sub-layer was approximately 4mm thick. Calculations of power spectral density, together with inspection of time histories, have confirmed that a laminar flow was present at the bottom of the heated wall. P.S.D. calculations showed that the dominant frequencies of transition were multiples of a base frequency and dependent on the local temperature drop between the wall and the "environment". The power relationship between frequency and power spectral density has been shown to depend on the local vertical temperature gradient. Three sub-ranges were identified in the velocity spectra, whereas four were identified in the temperature spectra. The equivalent ranges in the velocity and temperature spectra exhibited different powers on the frequency, with those of the temperature field being larger.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:367099
Date January 1989
CreatorsKing, Kevin John
PublisherQueen Mary, University of London
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/25786

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