A NUMERICAL STUDY OF ASSISTING MIXED CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER FROM NARROW ISOTHERMAL VERTICAL FLAT PLATES

Many studies of mixed convective heat transfer from heated flat plates with the forced flow parallel to the plate surface are available, most of these studies dealing with wide plates. However, practical situations exist in which there is effectively mixed convective heat transfer from narrow plates and in such cases the relative plate width is expected to have a significant influence on the heat transfer rate. The present study numerically investigates how the relative width of the plate affects the mixed convective heat transfer rate from a thin narrow vertical plate. It has been assumed that the plate surfaces are isothermal. The Boussinesq approach has been adopted. The solution has been obtained using ANSYS FLUENT (c). The mean heat transfer rate from the heated surface of the plate has been expressed in terms of a Nusselt number based on the length of the plate, this Nusselt numbers being dependent on the Rayleigh number and the Reynolds number based on the plate length, on the ratio of the plate width to the plate length, and on the Prandtl number. Results have only been obtained for a Prandtl number of 0.74. Variations of the Nusselt numbers with Rayleigh number and with Reynolds number for various dimensionless plate widths have been obtained, the results showing that the effect of the plate width on the heat transfer rate can be significant.