The reason for undertaking this study was to determine the possible involvement of natural convection in the global heat transfer, that occurs in the heated steel rods bed. This problem is related to the setting of the effective thermal conductivity of the bars bed. This value is one of the boundary conditions for heating modeling of steel rods bundles during heat treatment. The aim of this study was to determine for which geometry of the bed bars, there will be no free convection. To analyze the problem the Rayleigh criterion was used. It was assumed that for the value of the number Ra < 1700 convection in the bed bars does not occur. For analysis, the results of measurements of the temperature distribution in the unidirectionally heated beds of bars were used. It has been shown, that for obtained, during the test, differences of temperature between the surfaces of adjacent rods, convection can occur only when the diameter of the rod exceeds 18 mm.

Experimental investigation of natural convection heat transfer in heated vertical tubes dissipating heat from the internal surface is presented. The test section is electrically heated and constant wall heat flux is maintained both circumferentially and axially. Four different test sections are taken having 45 mm internal diameter and 3.8 mm thickness. The length of the test sections are 450 mm, 550 mm, 700 mm and 850 mm. Ratios of length to diameter of the test sections are taken as 10, 12.22, 15.56, and 18.89. Wall heat fluxes are maintained at 250–3341 W/m2. Experiments are also conducted on channels with internal rings of rectangular section placed at various distances. Thickness of the rings are taken as 4 mm, 6 mm, and 8 mm. The step size of the rings varies from 75 mm to 283.3 mm. The nondimensional ring spacing, expressed as the ratios of step size to diameter, are taken from 1.67 to 6.29 and the non-dimensional ring thickness, expressed as the ratios of ring thickness to diameter are taken from 0.089 to 0.178. The ratios of ring spacing to its thickness are taken as 9.375 to 70.82. The effects of various parameters such as length to diameter ratio, wall heat flux, ring thickness and ring spacing on local steady-state heat transfer behavior are observed. From the experimental data a correlation is developed for average Nusselt number and modified Rayleigh number. Another correlation is also developed for modified Rayleigh number and modified Reynolds number. These correlations can predict the data accurately within ±10% error.

A passive autocatalytic hydrogen recombiner (PAR) is a self-starting device, without operator action or external power input, installed in nuclear power plants to remove hydrogen from the containment building of a nuclear reactor. A new mechanistic model of PAR has been presented and validated by experimental data and results of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The model allows to quickly and accurately predict gas temperature and composition, catalyst temperature and hydrogen recombination rate. It is assumed in the model that an exothermic recombination reaction of hydrogen and oxygen proceeds at the catalyst surface only, while processes of heat and mass transport occur by assisted natural and forced convection in non-isothermal and laminar gas flow conditions in vertical channels between catalyst plates. The model accounts for heat radiation from a hot catalyst surface and has no adjustable parameters. It can be combined with an equation of chimney draft and become a useful engineering tool for selection and optimisation of catalytic recombiner geometry.

The effect of rotating magnetic field on the heat transfer process in a magnetically assisted bioreactor was studied experimentally. Experimental investigations are provided for the explanation of the influence of the rotating magnetic field on natural convection. The heat transfer coefficients and the Nusselt numbers were determined as a function of the product of Grashof and Prandtl dimensionless numbers. Moreover, the comparison of the thermal performance between the tested set-up and a vertical cylinder was carried out. The relative enhancement of heat transfer was characterized by the rate of the relative heat transfer intensification. The study showed that along with the intensity of the magnetic field the heat transfer increased.

The present work aims at studying the effects of orientation, size, position, and the combination of multiple internal diathermal obstructions in a fluid-saturated square porous enclosure, generally encountered in thermal insulations. The overall objective is to suppress the natural convection fluid flow and heat transfer across a differentially heated porous enclosure. To serve this purpose, multiple diathermal obstructions are employed to mechanically protrude into a porous medium. It is sought to estimate the effect of various types of orientation, clustering and alternate positioning of obstructions by considering number of obstructions (Np), length of obstructions (λ), modified Rayleigh number (Ra*) on local and average Nusselt number (Nu). The Darcy model for porous media is solved using Finite difference method along with Successive Accelerated Replacement scheme. One of the findings is that the value of the Nusselt number decreases by increasing both, the number of obstructions as well as the length of obstructions irrespective of its orientation and positioning. The reduction in Nusselt number is significant with obstructions attached on lower half of the hot wall and/or on upper half of cold wall. In addition, the overall reduction in Nusselt number is slightly greater with obstructions attached explicitly to the cold wall.

This paper presents an extended finite element method applied to solve phase change problems taking into account natural convection in the liquid phase. It is assumed that the transition from one state to another, e.g., during the solidification of pure metals, is discontinuous and that the physical properties of the phases vary across the interface. According to the classical Stefan condition, the location, topology and rate of the interface changes are determined by the jump in the heat flux. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the Boussinesq approximation of the natural convection flow are solved for the liquid phase. The no-slip condition for velocity and the melting/freezing condition for temperature are imposed on the interface using penalty method. The fractional four-step method is employed for analysing conjugate heat transfer and unsteady viscous flow. The phase interface is tracked by the level set method defined on the same finite element mesh. A new combination of extended basis functions is proposed to approximate the discontinuity in the derivative of the temperature, velocity and the pressure fields. The single-mesh approach is demonstrated using three two-dimensional benchmark problems. The results are compared with the numerical and experimental data obtained by other authors.