Heat Transfer

Natural Convection Concepts

Introduction

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on forced convection problems in which the fluid motion is driven externally, for example by a fan or a pump. However, even in the limit of no externally driven fluid motion, a solid surrounded by a fluid may not reduce to a conduction problem because the fluid adjacent to a heated or cooled surface will usually not be stagnant. Natural (or free) convection refers to convection problems in which the fluid is not driven mechanically but rather thermally; that is, fluid motion is driven by density gradients that are induced in the fluid as it is heated or cooled. The velocities induced by these density gradients are typically small and therefore the absolute magnitude of natural convection heat transfer coefficients is also typically small.

The flow patterns induced by heating or cooling can be understood intuitively; hot fluid tends to have lower density and therefore rise (flow against gravity) while cold fluid with higher density tends to fall (flow with gravity). The existence of a temperature gradient does not guarantee fluid motion. Figure 6-1(a) illustrates fluid between two plates oriented horizontally (i.e., perpendicular to the gravity vector g ) where the lower plate is heated (to TH ) and the upper plate is cooled (to TC ). The heated fluid will tend to rise and the cooled fluid fall, resulting in the natural convection “cells” that are shown in Figure 6-1(a).