Analysis of conduction - natural convection conjugate heat transfer in the gap between concentric cylinders under solar irradiation

Although, in general, most of concentric cylinders used in engineering applications are heated non-uniformly, studies on the natural convection in the air layer between the cylinders have been performed only for the uniform heating so that it is difficult to apply the results to the real cases. In the present study, the effects of material property of outer cylinder and the air gap thickness between cylinders on the natural convection are investigated by computational fluid dynamics and experimental means. Namely, conduction-natural convection conjugated heat transfer in the concentric cylinders, gun and shield tube, under solar irradiation, is analyzed numerically and the various predictions on the resultant thermal deformations of gun are compared to the experimental data with variation of the gap thickness of cylinders and material properties of shield tube. Results show that larger the thermal conductivity of shield tube, smaller the Nusselt number variations of gun and shield tube surfaces. This is due to that balance of conduction in the cylinders and natural convection in the gap between inner and outer cylinders may increase the uniformity of the air layer temperature. High thermal conductivity of shield tube inhibits the natural convection in the air layer and there exists a gap thickness that exerts an influence critically on the thermal deformation of gun. (c) 2008 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.