Investigation of free convection in a vertical water channel

Natural convection in an asymmetrically heated, vertical channel was studied both experimentally and computationally. The experiments were performed in water for an aspect ratio of the vertical channel (ratio between spacing and height) equal to 0.1. The schlieren technique was used to obtain the local heat transfer coefficient; this work seemingly represents the first attempt to apply this optical method to measure the local heat transfer coefficient using water as convective fluid. Numerical simulations demonstrated that thermal and fluid flow fields can be regarded as two-dimensional inside the channel and that the heated wall of the channel is practically isothermal. The good agreement between experimental and numerical distributions of the heat transfer coefficient encourages the use of the schlieren technique for the study of free-convection heat transfer in water flows.