Lecture 17, February 12, 2004

• Assignment 2 due date ?

• Project posted
• Matlab tutorial scheduling in the works
• Freezing Water

Introduction to convection

The goal of this section is to determine the convection

coefficients that we have been using in Newton’s law of
cooling. In order to do this we really need to understand
the underlying physics and appreciate what the convection
coefficient is.

The convection coefficient, h, is a convenient way of

assuming away the fluids problem that is convection. The
allows us to apparently decouple the fluids problem and the
heat transfer problem. This is convenient for teaching
thermo-fluids in separate courses, but it obscures the
understanding of what is really going on, and our ability to
develop ‘intuition’ about these phenomena.

There is an enormous amount of empirical data for

numerous different flows and configurations. This data is
most often very specific to the exact configuration and
range of parameters used in the experiments. Finding the
data that is ‘closest’ to your desired case can result in
enormous errors.
Understanding what is going on is the only way to avoid
these pitfalls.

Convection is heat transfer due to fluid motion adjacent to a

surface of interest Æ Convection IS a thermo-fluids
problem. You can learn more about fluid mechanics from a
course on convective heat transfer than you can from a
course on fluids alone.

Overview of Fluid Mechanics

Empirical Analytical

Experiments Differential Integral

Correlations Navier-Stokes

Boundary Inviscid
Layer (Euler equation)

Potential
Flow
Let’s begin to get acquainted with the physics.
 U∞
U∞ y δ(x)
T∞ x Ts > T∞

δΤ(x)
T∞
Any real fluid will have a zero velocity at a solid surface
(no-slip condition), and accordingly, a velocity profile must
develop to transition between zero at the wall and the free
stream velocity. This region where the velocity is different
than the free stream is called the boundary layer.
Similarly, if the temperature of the surface is different than
the temperature of the air, a corresponding thermal
boundary layer will develop. These two boundary layers
are related, but are not necessarily the same size. The
boundary layers will grow at different rates depending on
the diffusivity of the process.

Momentum diffuses according to the kinematic viscosity,

while thermal energy is transported according to the
thermal diffusivity.
The relative size of the boundary layers will be related to
the ratio of these two diffusivities. This ratio is called the
Prandtl number.

Convective heat transfer will be greater near the start of the

plate where the gradients are largest. As the boundary
layers grow, the temperature near the surface increases, and
heat transfer will decrease. Clearly h cannot be constant
along the plate. When we talk about a single convection
coefficient we are talking about some average value.

For a surface,

Or, for a 1 dimensional case