Natural convection heat transfer in a uniformly heated horizontal pipe

Natural convection heat transfers inside horizontal pipes were measured. The Rayleigh numbers were varied from 6.8 × 108 to 1.5 × 1012, while the Prandtl number was fixed at 2,094. Based on the analogy concept, a copper sulfate electroplating system was adopted to measure mass transfer rates in place of heat transfer rates. Test results using single-piece electrodes were in good agreement with the work of Sarac and Korkut. The angle-dependent mass transfer rates, measured using piecewise electrodes, were compared with the results of studies on natural convection in concentric annuli, and showed similar trends. The experiments were expanded to the turbulent region, and a transition criterion was proposed. Angle-dependent natural convection heat transfer correlations for the laminar and turbulent regions were derived.