AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HEAT-TRANSFER IN A PARTIALLY FILLED HORIZONTAL ENCLOSURE

An experimental investigation of natural convection in enclosures that are partially filled with a variety of commonly used fibrous insulations is presented. The investigation directly aims at simulating conditions that closely relate to realistic situations in which these insulations are used. It is the heat transfer process at the low Ra(L)* values, which relates to the realistic situations in which these insulations are used, that has been largely ignored. It is found that although the heat transfer rate does increase as soon as an air gap is introduced, for some cases it might be beneficial to reduce the insulation by as much as one-third at the expense of a modest increase in heat transfer.