Natural Convection From Protruding Heat Sources in a Channel

Natural convection has important implications in many applications like cooling of electronic equipment due to its low cost and easy maintenance. In the present study, two-dimensional natural convection heat transfer to air from multiple identical protruding heat sources, which simulate electronic components, located in a horizontal channel has been studied numerically. The fluid flow and temperature profiles, above the heating elements placed between an adiabatic lower plate and an isothermal upper plate, are obtained using numerical simulation. The effects of source temperatures, channel dimensions, openings, boundary conditions, and source locations on the heat transfer from and flow above the protruding sources are investigated. Different configurations of channel dimensions and separation distances of heat sources are considered and their effects on natural convection heat transfer characteristics are studied. The results show that the channel dimensions have a significant effect on fluid flow. However, their effects on heat transfer are found to be small. The separation distance is found to be an important parameter affecting the heat transfer rate. The numerical results of temperature profiles are compared with the experimental measurements performed using Filtered Rayleigh Scattering (FRS) technique in an earlier study, indicating good agreement. It is observed that adiabatic upper plate assumption leads to better temperature predictions than isothermal plate assumption.