UNIVERSITI KUALA LUMPUR

MALAYSIA FRANCE INSTITUTE

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING SECTION

Laboratory Experiment Sheet

HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER

FREE AND FORCED HEAT CONVECTION

OBJECTIVES

 To determine the convective thermal coefficient for free and forced convection from a
flat surface, an array of cylinders and an array of fins.
 To study the effects of shape geometry to the heat transfer rate.

THEORY

CONVECTION
Convection is classified as natural (or free) and
forced convection, depending on how the fluid
motion is initiated (Figure 1). In forced convection,
the fluid is forced to flow over a surface or in a pipe
by external means such as a pump or a fan. In
natural convection, any fluid motion is caused by
natural means such as the buoyancy effect, which
manifests itself as the rise of warmer fluid and the
fall of the cooler fluid. Convection is also classified
as external and internal, depending on whether the
fluid is forced to flow over a surface or in a channel.

Conduction and convection both require the

presence of a material medium but convection
requires fluid motion. Convection involves fluid Figure 1: Heat transfer from a hot
motion as well as heat conduction. Heat transfer surface to the surrounding fluid by
through a solid is always by conduction. Heat convection and conduction.
transfer through a fluid is by convection in the
presence of bulk fluid motion and by conduction in the absence of it.
FILM TEMPERATURE

The fluid temperature in the thermal boundary layer varies from TW at the surface to about Ta at
the outer edge of the boundary. The fluid properties also vary with temperature, and thus with
position across the boundary layer. In order to account for the variation of the properties with
temperature, the fluid properties are usually evaluated at the so-called film temperature Tf,
defined as

.
REYNOLDS NUMBER

The transition from laminar to turbulent flow depends on the surface geometry, surface
roughness, free-stream velocity, surface temperature, and type of fluid, among other things. the
flow regime depends mainly on the ratio of the inertia forces to viscous forces in the fluid. This
ratio is called the Reynolds number, which is a dimensionless quantity, and is expressed for
external flow as

where velocity v (m/s), density ρ (kg/m3), length L (m), diameter D (m) and dynamic viscosity µ
(kg/m.s).

NUSSELT NUMBER

In convection studies, it is common practice to nondimensionalize the governing equations and

combine the variables, which group together into dimensionless numbers in order to reduce the
number of total variables. It is also common practice to nondimensionalize the heat transfer
coefficient h with the Nusselt number. For plate,

For cylinder, refer Appendix A.

HEAT TRANSFER RATE

Despite the complexity of convection, the rate of convection heat transfer is observed to be
proportional to the temperature difference, and is conveniently expressed by Newton’s law of
cooling as

Q = hA(Tw-Ta)
APPARATUS

SINGLE PLATE & FINNED DIMENSION

PINNED (CYLINDER) DIMENSION

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

1. Plot temperature versus time for all three types of fin in ONE graph based on the following
table.

PLATE FINNED PINNED

TIME SPEED PLATE
(min) (m/s) HEAT HEAT HEAT
TEMP. TEMP. TEMP.
TRANSFER TRANSFER TRANSFER
1
0
2
3
4
⁞

2. For each type of fin at every minutes, determine the heat transfer rate Q by following
steps below (show ONE example calculation for plate and cyclinder. Hint: better to use
MS Excel for all calculations):
i. Average temperature Tw
ii. Film temperature Tf
iii. Properties of air at Tf (refer to Appendix B)
iv. Reynolds number Re
v. Nusselt numbers Nu
vi. Thermal coeffcicient h
vii. Heat transfer rate Q
3. Discuss the difference between free and forced convection.
4. Discuss the difference in heat transfer rate among those three type of fin.
5. Discuss 2 possible source of errors (other than parallax error) and how it’s can effect the
result

APPENDIX A
 APPENIDX B

Endorsed by :
Technical Unit Leader HOS/ PC
Sign & Stamp Sign & Stamp
Date Date