Introduction

In convection, the heat is transferred through a fluid in the presence of bulk fluid motion.
There are two classifications of convection, one is free convection where heat transfer arises
spontaneously (or naturally or freely) through the creation of convection cells or it can be forced
by pushing the fluid across the object or by the object through the fluid. In this virtual
experiment, the natural or free convection was used. Fluid was caused by natural means such as
buoyancy. One example is the cooling of reactor cores in nuclear power plants, though often the
coolant is driven by pumps, resulting in more efficient heat transfer by forced convection.

Newton's Law of Cooling states that the rate of change of the temperature of an object is
proportional to the difference between its own temperature and the ambient temperature (i.e. the
temperature of its surroundings). It expresses the overall effect of convection

𝑄
= ℎ𝐴∆𝑇
𝑡
𝑄
Where is the rate of heat transfer, h is the convective heat transfer coefficient, A is the area of
𝑡
the cylinder and ΔT is the temperature difference between the surface of the cylinder and the
surroundings. This experiment is for vertical cylinder since h depends on the shape and
orientation of the object.

On the other hand, Nusselt number is a dimensionless number defined as the ratio of
convection heat transfer to fluid conduction heat transfer under the same conditions. It is used to
relate data for heat transfer coefficient to the thermal
conductivity of the fluid, can also be determined using the value for h.

ℎ𝐿
𝑁𝑁𝑈 =
𝑘
Where, L is the length of cylinder and k is is the thermal conductivity of air.

Objectives

This experiment generally aimed to study the heat transfer at the surface of a vertical
metal cylinder made of different materials by natural convection method.

Specifically to,

1. determine the values of the convective heat transfer coefficients and Nusselt number of
air passing through the vertical metal cylinder for different materials used namely, copper
and silver.
 2. determine whether there is a significant difference between the convective heat transfer
coefficients and Nusselt number of air passing through the vertical metal cylinder
between copper and silver.

3. determine the temperatures at the different parts of the vertical cylinder with varying
voltage reading but at the same time interval.

Scope and Limitation

This experiment wanted to compare the values of the convective heat transfer coefficients
and Nusselt number of two different materials, copper and silver.

To attain these objectives, a virtual simulator available online for a natural convection
apparatus was used. Air is assigned to be the fluid. Side and height of wooden box, diameter,
length and thickness of
cylinder were held constant which are 7.5 cm and 75 cm, 7 cm, 55 cm and 0.2 cm respectively.
Voltage was varied with values starting from 0 to 100 V to 200 V to 300 V.

The following assumptions were considered:

1. Specific heat capacities of fluid and material are constant.

2. Operation is at steady-state.

3. Thermal conductivity of air is 0.024 W/m-K

The experiment was only done virtually due to lack of availability of the equipment. The
result was limited only to the data given by the simulator.

This experiment is not a real time experiment therefore can covered half only of the
laboratory time.

References

Geankoplis, C. J. (1995). Transport Processes and Unit Operations. Prentice-Hall

International.

Shang, Devi (2006). Free convection film flows and heat transfer.
hyperphysics.com. (n.a), Heat Transfer Retrieved 19 February 2019 from hyperphysics.phy

astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatra.html

vlab.amrita.edu,. (2011). Heat Transfer by Natural Convection. Retrieved 18 February 2019,

from vlab.amrita.edu/?sub=1&brch=194&sim=791&cnt=1

UBC, (n.a), Other differential equations, Retrieved 20 February 2019 from

http://www.ugrad.math.ubc.ca/coursedoc/math100/notes/diffeqs/cool.html