J Heat Transfer 2000 Vol 122 N3

Transactions Journal of
of the ASME Heat Transfer ®
HEAT TRANSFER DIVISION Published Quarterly by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Chair, L. C. WITTE
Vice Chair, J. H. KIM
Past Chair, R. A. NELSON VOLUME 122 • NUMBER 3 • AUGUST 2000
Secretary, Y. BAYAZITOGLU
Treasurer, R. D. SKOCYPEC
Technical Editor, V. DHIR „2005… HEAT TRANSFER GALLERY
Associate Technical Editors,
C. T. AVEDISIAN „2002… 421 Introduction
H. H. BAU „2003… K. D. Kihm
C. BECKERMANN „2001…
A. BEJAN „2003… 422 Photographs and Simulations of Molten Metal Droplets Landing on a
V. P. CAREY „2003… Solid Surface
F. B. CHEUNG „2002… M. Bussmann, S. D. Aziz, S. Chandra, and J. Mostaghimi
T. Y. CHU „2002…
B. T. F. CHUNG „2001… 423 Lagrangian Flow Mapping of Heated Capillary Pore and Thin Film Using
M. FAGHRI „2003… Molecular Fluorescence Velocimetry „MFV…
J. G. GEORGIADIS „2003…
J. P. GORE „2002…
J. S. Park, C. McCarty, K. D. Kihm, and D. M. Pratt
M. HUNT „2002… 424 Plasma Development During Picosecond Laser Processing of Electronic
D. A. KAMINSKI „2001… Materials
R. L. MAHAJAN „2001…
A. MAJUMDAR „2001… Samuel S. Mao, Ralph Greif, Xianglei Mao, and Richard E. Russo
G. P. PETERSON „2003…
D. POULIKAKOS „2002…
425 The Differences in the Counter-Rotating Vortex Pair Structures in a
S. S. SADHAL „2002… Crossflow Jet Subjected to Various Thermal Stratifications
R. D. SKOCYPEC „2003… Kyung Chun Kim, Sang Ki Kim, Sang Youl Yoon, and
D. A. ZUMBRUNNEN „2001… Kyung Hyun Park
BOARD ON COMMUNICATIONS
426 Interaction of Downward and Upward Convection of Water Between Two
Chairman and Vice President Cooling Tubes
R. K. SHAH Ichiro Nakane, Akira Narumi, and Takao Kashiwagi
427 Adiabatic Effectiveness and Nusselt Number Distribution on a Flat
OFFICERS OF THE ASME Surface With an Oblique Impinging Jet
President, J. R. PARKER
Executive Director, J. W. Baughn, M. Dietzel, and J. E. Mayhew
D. L. BELDEN
428 Infrared Photographs of a Gas Loaded Flat Heat Pipe
Treasurer,
J. A. MASON M. Cerza
429 Visualization of Solidification in a Simulated Czochralski System
PUBLISHING STAFF Michele Ferland, Debasish Mishra, and Vishwanath Prasad
Managing Director, Engineering
CHARLES W. BEARDSLEY
TECHNICAL PAPERS
Director, Technical Publishing
PHILIP DI VIETRO 1999 Max Jakob Memorial Award Lecture
Managing Editor, Technical Publishing 430 From Heat Transfer Principles to Shape and Structure in Nature:
CYNTHIA B. CLARK Constructal Theory
Managing Editor, Transactions Adrian Bejan
CORNELIA MONAHAN
Production Coordinator
Conduction Heat Transfer
JUDITH SIERANT 450 Inverse Determination of Temperature-Dependent Thermal Conductivity
Production Assistant Using Steady Surface Data on Arbitrary Objects
MARISOL ANDINO T. J. Martin and G. S. Dulikravich
Forced Convection
Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Heat Transfer (ISSN
0022-1481) is published quarterly (Feb., May, Aug., Nov.) 460 Inverse Convection Problem for Determining Wall Heat Flux in Annular
by The American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, Three Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
Duct Flow
Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional H.-Y. Li and W.-M. Yan
mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Heat Transfer, c/o 465 Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop of Laminar Flow in Horizontal Tubes
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS, 22
Law Drive, Box 2300, Fairfield, NJ 07007-2300. WithÕWithout Longitudinal Inserts
CHANGES OF ADDRESS must be received at Society S.-S. Hsieh and I.-W. Huang
headquarters seven weeks before they are to be effective.
Please send old label and new address.
STATEMENT from By-Laws. The Society shall not be
responsible for statements or opinions advanced in papers or
... printed in its publications (B7.1, Para. 3), COPYRIGHT
© 2000 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. For
authorization to photocopy material for internal or personal
use under those circumstances not falling within the fair use
provisions of the Copyright Act, contact the Copyright
Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA
„Contents continued on inside back cover…
01923, tel: 978-750-8400, www.copyright.com. Request
for special permission or bulk copying should be addressed to
Reprints/Permission Department. INDEXED by Applied
Mechanics Reviews and Engineering Information, Inc. Canadian
Goods & Services Tax Registration #126148048.
Downloaded 04 Feb 2011 to 194.85.80.107. Redistribution subject to ASME license or copyright; see http://www.asme.org/terms/Terms_Use.cfm
„Contents continued…
Journal of Heat Transfer Volume 122, Number 3 AUGUST 2000
Natural and Mixed Convection

476 Effect of Double Dispersion on Mixed Convection Heat and Mass Transfer in Non-Darcy Porous Medium
P. V. S. N. Murthy
485 Laminar Natural Convection in Isosceles Triangular Enclosures Heated From Below and Symmetrically Cooled
From Above
G. A. Holtzman, R. W. Hill, and K. S. Ball
Radiative Transfer
492 Inverse Design Model for Radiative Heat Transfer
J. R. Howell, O. A. Ezekoye, and J. C. Morales
503 Comparison of Monte Carlo Surface Exchange With Radiative Continuum Results in Large Particle Dispersions
E. Nisipeanu and P. D. Jones
Boiling and Condensation
509 Pool Boiling Heat Transfer From Plain and Microporous, Square Pin-Finned Surfaces in Saturated FC-72
K. N. Rainey and S. M. You
Combustion
517 Optical Properties in the Visible of Overfire Soot in Large Buoyant Turbulent Diffusion Flames
S. S. Krishnan, K.-C. Lin, and G. M. Faeth
Heat Pipes
525 An Experimental Investigation of the Transient Characteristics on a Flat-Plate Heat Pipe During Startup and
Shutdown Operations
Y. Wang and K. Vafai
Microscale Heat Transfer
536 Molecular Dynamics Study of Solid Thin-Film Thermal Conductivity
J. R. Lukes, D. Y. Li, X.-G. Liang, and C.-L. Tien
544 An Experimental Study of Molten Microdroplet Surface Deposition and Solidification: Transient Behavior and
Wetting Angle Dynamics
D. Attinger, Z. Zhao, and D. Poulikakos
Porous Media, Particles, and Droplets
557 Forced Convection in High Porosity Metal Foams
V. V. Calmidi and R. L. Mahajan
Heat Exchangers
566 Estimating Number of Shells in Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers: A New Approach Based on Temperature Cross
B. B. Gulyani
572 Flow and Heat Transfer Correlations for Porous Fin in a Plate-Fin Heat Exchanger
S. Y. Kim, J. W. Paek, and B. H. Kang
579 Optimization of Matrix Heat Exchanger Geometry
K. Pavan Kumar and G. Venkatarathnam
Heat Transfer Enhancement
587 Influence of Crossflow-Induced Swirl and Impingement on Heat Transfer in an Internal Coolant Passage of a
Turbine Airfoil
S. V. Ekkad, G. Pamula, and S. Acharya
TECHNICAL NOTES
598 Transient Double Diffusive Convection in a Vertical Enclosure With Asymmetrical Boundary Conditions
S. Mergui and D. Gobin
602 Natural Convection in Low Prandtl Number Fluids With a Vertical Magnetic Field
S. Saravanan and P. Kandaswamy
606 Approximate Solution of a Class of Radiative Heat Transfer Problems
H. Qiao, Y. Ren, and B. Zhang
613 An Analytical Model to Predict Condensation of R-410A in a Horizontal Rectangular Channel
Z. Guo and N. K. Anand
620 Subcooled Flow Boiling in Circumferentially Nonuniform and Uniform Heated Vertical Channels With Downward
Flow
Q. Peatiwala and R. D. Boyd, Sr.
„Contents continued on facing page…
„Contents continued…
Journal of Heat Transfer Volume 122, Number 3 AUGUST 2000
626 Fusion Zone Shapes in Electron-Beam Welding Dissimilar Metals

P. S. Wei, Y. K. Kuo, and J. S. Ku
DISCUSSION
632 Discussion of ‘‘Heat Transfer Measurement and Analysis for Sintered Porous Channels,’’ by G. J. Hwang and
C. H. Chao—Discussion by S. J. Kim and D. Kim
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND SPECIAL NOTES

634 Second ICHMT Symposium on Advances in Computational Heat Transfer—Announcement
636 2000 IMECE Session on Photogallery of Heat Transfer Phenomena—Call for Photographs
637 Turbulent Heat Transfer III—Announcement
638 35th National Heat Transfer Conference—Call for Papers
639 Information for Authors
640 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME
Journal of
Heat Transfer
Heat Transfer
Gallery
The fourth ‘‘Heat Transfer Photogallery’’ was held at the 1999 Editor, Jack Howell, for his support and editorial guidance toward
International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exhibition in the publication of the photogallery entries. The editorial assistance
Nashville last November. The Heat Transfer Visualization Com- of Ms. Judith Sierant of ASME is appreciated in the production of
mittee sponsored the session and attracted 13 photo displays, this photo collection.
which illustrate phenomena that occur in the presence of a tem-
perature gradient. Eight entries were selected for publication in
this special section of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer. References
The purpose of publishing these photographs is to draw atten-
tion to the innovative features of optical diagnostics and aesthetic Aziz, S. D., and Chandra, S., 2000, ‘‘Impact, Recoil and Splashing of Molten Metal
Droplets,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 43, pp. 2841–2857.
qualities of thermal processes. To focus on the visualization, the Bussmann, M., Mostaghimi, J., and Chandra, S., 1999, ‘‘On a Three-Dimensional
text is kept at a minimum and further details should be found Volume Tracking Model of Droplet Impact,’’ Phys. Fluids, 11, pp. 1406–1417.
through the listed references or directly from the authors. The Cerza, M., Boughey, B., and Lindler, K. W., 2000, ‘‘A Flat Heat Pipe for Use as a
photographs include visualizations of: 共1兲 phenomena of molten Cold Side Heat Sink,’’ Session on Heat Pipes, Proceedings of the 35th Intersociety
Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, AIAA, July 24–28, AIAA, Washing-
droplet breakup on a solid surface, 共2兲 microscale flow velocity ton, DC, pp. 1418–1427.
mapping using molecular fluorescence velocimetry 共MFV兲, 共3兲 Kim, Kyung Chun, and Kim, Sang Ki, 1998, ‘‘Flow Visualization Study on Plume
picosecond laser pulse impact on a surface, 共4兲 counter-rotating Behavior in Thermally Stratified Wind,’’ Int. J. Environ. Conscious Design
thermal cross flows, 共5兲 natural convection using interferometry, Manuf., 7, No. 4, pp. 25–35.
Kihm, K. D., Kim, H. J., and Pratt, D. M., 1999, ‘‘Image Corrections for Heated
共6兲 oblique impinging jet using liquid crystal technique, 共7兲 gas Micro-Scale Capillary Pore Flows,’’ 2nd Pacific Symposium on Flow Visualiza-
loaded heat pipe using infrared imaging, and 共8兲 solidification of tion and Image Processing 共PSFVIP-2兲, Paper No. OF203, May, Honolulu, HI.
water using liquid crystal thermography. It is now proposed that Kihm, K. D., and Pratt, D. M., 1999, ‘‘Contour Mapping of Thin Liquid Film Thick-
the journal readers enjoy viewing these collections, acquire ness Using Fizeau Interferometer,’’ Paper No. NHTC99-224, Aug., Albuquerque,
NM.
knowledge of the state-of-the-art features potentially applicable Mao, S. S., Mao, X. L., Grief, R., and Russo, R. E., 2000, ‘‘Dynamics of an Air
for their own research, and promote their participation in IMECE Breakdown Plasma on a Solid Surface During Picosecond Laser Ablation,’’ Appl.
Photogallery session presentation 共refer to the Call for Photogal- Phys. Lett., 76, p. 31.
lery for 2000-IMECE announced in this volume兲. Mukherjee, D. K., Prasad, V., Dutta, P., and Yuan, T., 1996, ‘‘Liquid Crystal Visu-
alization of the Effects of Crucible and Crystal Rotation on the CZ Melt Flows,’’
The web-based review 共http://wwwmengr.tamu.edu/otherlinks/ J. Cryst. Growth, 169, pp. 136–146.
htppr/index.asp兲 has been carried out and the review was based on Narumi, A., Ohishi, S., Nakane, I., and Kashiwagi, T., 1995, ‘‘Flow Visualization of
the subjective measure of the merit of individual entries, i.e., their Convective Interference of Water Around Two Cooling Tubes by Holographic
innovative features in visualization techniques, scientific impor- Interferometry,’’ Proceedings, 7th International Symposium on Flow Visualiza-
tion, J. P. Crowder, ed., Begell House, New York, pp. 314–319.
tance on heat and mass transfer phenomena, and the artistic Russo, R. E., Mao, X. L., Liu, H. C., Yoo, J. H., and Mao, S. S., 1999, ‘‘Time-
beauty of the presentation. Sincere thanks go to the following who Resolved Plasma Diagnostics and Mass Removal During Single-Pulse Laser Ab-
participated in the web-based reviews in ranking the entries: lation,’’ Appl. Phys. A: Mater. Sci. Process., 69A, p. S887.
C. Ammerman, J. Baughn, Y. Bayazitoglu, C. Beckermann,
M. Bussmann, M. Cerza, S. Chandra, T. Y. Chu, R. Douglass, K. D. Kihm
S. V. Ekkad, D. K, Ezekoye, A. Haji-Sheikh, J. Howell, M. Hung, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
M. K. Jensen, D. Juric, J. Kim, K. C. Kim, J. Lage, J. H. Lienhard,
J. R. Lloyd, S. S. Mao, I. Nakane, J. M. Ochterbeck, C. H. Oh,
Texas A&M University,
T. O’Hern, and R. H. Page. Special thanks go to the Technical College Station, TX 77843-3123
Journal of Heat Transfer Copyright © 2000 by ASME AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 421
Downloaded 07 Dec 2010 to 193.140.21.150. Redistribution subject to ASME license or copyright; see http://www.asme.org/terms/Terms_Use.cfm
PHOTOGRAPHS AND SIMULATIONS OF MOLTEN METAL DROPLETS LANDING ON A SOLID SURFACE
M. Bussmann, S. D. Aziz, S. Chandra, and J. Mostaghimi

Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
We present photographs and numerical simulations of the im- and the entire impact process pieced together from these
pact of molten tin droplets onto a solid stainless steel surface. A photographs.
single-shot flash photographic technique is used to capture droplet To simulate droplet impact we have developed a three-
impact. An electronic flash unit takes a single 35-mm photograph dimensional free surface flow model. The model combines a
of a droplet at one instant after impact. As a droplet falls towards fixed-grid finite volume discretization of the Navier-Stokes equa-
the surface it interrupts the beam of a 0.5 mW He-Ne laser. A tions with a volume tracking method to track the free surface
photodiode detects this interruption and signals the time delay location. The model is capable of predicting complex fluid defor-
circuit, which opens the shutter of a 35-mm camera and then after mation during droplet impact, including spreading and recoil. We
a preset delay triggers the flash unit, producing an 8-␮s duration simulate the growth of instabilities around the rim of an impacting
flash. Impacting droplets are photographed at different stages of droplet, which leads to splashing and the detachment of satellite
deformation by varying the time delay before triggering the flash, droplets.
422 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Copyright © 2000 by ASME Transactions of the ASME
LAGRANGIAN FLOW MAPPING OF HEATED CAPILLARY PORE AND THIN FILM USING MOLECULAR
FLUORESCENCE VELOCIMETRY „MFV…
J. S. Park, C. McCarty, and K. D. Kihm

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
D. M. Pratt
Wright-Patterson AFRL, Dayton, Ohio
Molecular Fluorescence Velocimetry 共MFV兲 technique has with five degrees of inclination, 共a兲 and 共b兲 show the flow devel-
been developed and applied to map the Lagrangian velocity fields opment for the thin film region and the bulk pore region, respec-
for a heated capillary pore and its thin film region. MFV uses tively, when the heater is located in the liquid side. For the heater
caged fluorescence dye molecules 共Dextran Photo-Activated Fluo- located in the vapor side, 共c兲 and 共d兲 show the flow development.
rophores of less than 10 nm size兲 that are uncaged and tagged with The thermally driven flow near the bottom surface is directed to
the exposure to UV line of 355 nm in wavelength and 15-␮m the heater location for both cases and the present study evidences
beam diameter. The tagged molecules are pumped by the blue a fully three-dimensional flow exists below the meniscus and in-
laser 共␭⫽488 nm兲 for fluorescence and sequentially recorded side the thin film region. Note that the distorted, but similar im-
fluorescence images reveal detailed flow history for an ages just below the interface shown in 共a兲 and 共c兲 are formed by
extremely small scale flow field such as a microscale the mirror-like reflection of the real fluorescence image from the
thin film region. For the nearly horizontal pore of 5-mm diameter concave meniscus surface.
PLASMA DEVELOPMENT DURING PICOSECOND LASER PROCESSING OF ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
Samuel S. Mao, Ralph Greif, Xianglei Mao, and Richard E. Russo

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
University of California, Berkeley, California
Lasers with picosecond and shorter pulse duration are receiving laser irradiation of a copper target兲 shows a series of plasma
much attention due to their capabilities for direct-write micro- images at times ranging from 5 to 2500 ps. For the first time,
machining on most materials with minimal lateral damage. Depo- a cone-shaped plasma plume has been observed to grow
sition of energy from lasers of large power density inevitably during the early stage of picosecond laser-material interactions.
creates plasmas that often shield the target and reduce material The plasma front moves away from the target at 109 cm/s
processing efficiency. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge on during the laser pulse 共35 ps兲, but expands primarily in the
the formation and subsequent evolution of plasmas during laser radial direction after the pulse. The origin of this early-
processing of materials at the picosecond time scale. Such infor- stage plasma has been attributed to gas breakdown assisted by
mation is essential for precise control of laser energy coupling laser-induced electron emission from the target. Beginning at
with target materials, particularly for machining at microscale about 200 ps, a second plume emerges from the target surface,
depth. which consists of vaporized target material and expands at 106
We have performed experiments by imaging the spatial and cm/s into the free space above the target. This vapor plume gradu-
temporal development of plasmas during picosecond laser ally reaches the front of the early-stage plasma at times about
processing of electronic materials. The color plate 共1064 nm 2000 ps.
THE DIFFERENCES IN THE COUNTER-ROTATING VORTEX PAIR STRUCTURES IN A CROSSFLOW
JET SUBJECTED TO VARIOUS THERMAL STRATIFICATIONS
Kyung Chun Kim, Sang Ki Kim, Sang Youl Yoon, and Kyung Hyun Park
School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Pusan 609-735, Korea
The instantaneous cross-cuts of the crossflow jet show the well- were supplied to the jet flow only in order to identify the interac-
known kidney shape structures, but the features change their to- tions between the jet and the crossflow. A 200 mJ/pulse Nd:Yag
pology as well as scales according to the stability of the crossflow. laser with optical devices was used to provide a light sheet
Typical images of the counter-rotating structures taken at x/d⫽50 less than 1 mm thickness. The illumination time was set to be
of the round jet issued normally to the uniform crossflow with the 4 ns. The instantaneous image was captured by a 1K⫻1K digital
neutral, stable 共269 °C/m兲, and unstable 共⫺65.1 °C/m兲 stratifica- CCD camera and stored in a computer. The pseudo-colored
tions are shown in Figs. 共a兲, 共b兲 and 共c兲, respectively. The velocity images were obtained from the original black and white images
ratio between the jet and the crossflow is 5.8. The corresponding to illustrate the relative concentration fields. The pictures give
Reynolds number based on the jet diameter 共6 mm兲 and the jet us physical insights implied in the ‘‘conning’’ and ‘‘looping’’
velocity 共5.8 ms/兲 was 2300. We used the olive oil aerosol having behaviors of the plumes which are mainly due to the thermal
2 microns of mean diameter as the seeding particles. The particles stratifications.
INTERACTION OF DOWNWARD AND UPWARD CONVECTION OF WATER
BETWEEN TWO COOLING TUBES
Ichiro Nakane and Akira Narumi

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kanagawa Institute of Technology
Takao Kashiwagi
Division of Mechanical System Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo A&T
When water is cooled through 4°C, downward and upward con- tubes like a seesaw. Figures 共a兲–共j兲 shows the interferograms of
vection may be produced due to its anomalous relationship be- this phenomenon, where d⫽30 mm and L/d⫽2.0 共see Figure 共k兲兲.
tween temperature and density. In the case of placing two hori- The heart-shaped fringe over the lower tube is formed because the
zontal cooling tubes vertically in a rectangular enclosure, a development of the upward convection at the lower tube is pre-
downward convection dominates the entire flow field in the early vented by the downward convection from the upper tube. Note
process of cooling. With the progress of cooling, the interaction of that, when the upward convection develops further to reach just
downward and upward convection occurs between the two cool- before the bottom of the upper tube, it comes back to the point of
ing tubes. In most cases, the upward convection develops a heart shaped fringe. This behavior repeats several times. Finally
smoothly and becomes dominant between the two cooling tubes. the release of supercooling occurs at the lower tube, and then
In a rare case, however, the upward and downward convection this behavior is ended. Figure 共1兲 shows a schematic of this
keeps the balance making oscillation between the two cooling phenomenon.
ADIABATIC EFFECTIVENESS AND NUSSELT NUMBER DISTRIBUTION ON A FLAT SURFACE
WITH AN OBLIQUE IMPINGING JET
J. W. Baughn, M. Dietzel, and J. E. Mayhew
University of California, Davis, California
These pictures show the hue values 共calibrated against tempera- produce a uniform surface heat flux. In this case, the hue values
ture兲 of thermochromic liquid crystals on a flat surface with an represent the heat transfer coefficient distribution and illustrate the
oblique impinging air jet. region of enhanced heat transfer.
The pictures in the left column are obtained on an insulated Comparing the adiabatic effectiveness distribution to the
surface with a heated jet. For these pictures the hue values repre- heat transfer coefficient distribution it can be seen that there
sent the adiabatic effectiveness distribution and illustrate the re- is a region of strong variation in heat transfer coefficient
gion of entrainment effects. in which entrainment effects are small 共i.e., high effectiveness兲.
The pictures in the right column are for the same insulated Outside this region, both adiabatic effectiveness and heat
surface. However, in these pictures the jet is unheated; instead a transfer coefficient are needed to calculate the overall heat
micro-thin gold coating on the surface is electrically heated to transfer.
INFRARED PHOTOGRAPHS OF A GAS LOADED FLAT HEAT PIPE
M. Cerza
Mechanical Engineering Department, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
A large, gas loaded, flat heat pipe was videographed at horizon- depict the effects of a noncondensable gas at heat inputs
tal and vertical orientations with an infrared video camera. between 200 to 800 W. As the heat input is increased, vapor
The heat pipe was fabricated from sheets of Monel R-400 compresses the gas back activating more condenser area. In
and Monel screen and measured 1.22 m⫻0.30 m⫻0.01127 m. the vertical orientation 共second row兲, the noncondensable gas
The heat pipe evaporator section consisted of a 0.305 m⫻0.305 m is seen to sink down into the central portion of the heat pipe,
area 共one heated side兲 while the side opposite the heated section while water vapor rises up the edges of the heat pipe. The last two
was insulated. The remaining area of the heat pipe served rows 共vertical orientation兲 depict a time sequence which shows
as the condenser which was videographed. In the horizontal transient condensation oscillations caused by buoyancy and diffu-
orientation, the heated section was on the bottom. In the sion effects of the air and water vapor. The condensing vapor
vertical orientation, the evaporator was aligned below the front was seen to switch from side to side. Temperature is in
condenser. The first row sequence of photographs 共horizontal兲 Celsius.
VISUALIZATION OF SOLIDIFICATION IN A SIMULATED CZOCHRALSKI SYSTEM
Michele Ferland, Debasish Mishra, and Vishwanath Prasad

Department of Mechanical Engineering, SUNY Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York
Solidification of water from a crystal seed in a simulated Czo- visualize the solidification process.
chralski growth system is investigated for various rotation rates of Experiments are conducted for a range of Grashof numbers of
the crystal and crucible. Under the influence of a differentially 400,000. Interesting temperature fields are seen in the shape of
heating condition imposed by the crystal seed and the surrounding simple Benard roll type structures to a formation of complex os-
melt, a complex flow and thermal field is visualized. Three cillatory finger like patterns with many different size vertices. A
convection-driving currents, temperature gradient, surface tension quantitative estimate of the temperature field is obtained via a
gradient, and centrifugal forces due to rotation, along with the suitable calibration of the liquid crystals in a pure conduction
density inversion of water are responsible for the resulting flow state.
and thermal field. The first set of images captures the temperature field present
Liquid Crystal Thermography is employed to capture the im- with no rotation present in the melt. The next set of images is
ages of the temperature field and the transport phenomena in the under crucible rotation rates of 1.87 and 4.09 rpm. Crystal rotation
melt. The liquid crystals have a bandwidth of 10°C; starting with effects at 3.60 and 9.70 rpm can be seen in the next set of images.
red at ⬃1.2°C, green at ⬃2.1°C, blue at ⬃3.6°C and clearing at In the last set of images, counter-rotation effects of the crystal and
10°C. These crystals are employed in 0.005 percent by volume to crucible can be seen for 共1.70, 3.40兲 and 共3.40, 1.70兲 rpm.
1999 Max Jakob Memorial Award Lecture
From Heat Transfer Principles to

Shape and Structure in Nature:
Constructal Theory
This lecture reviews a relatively recent body of heat transfer work that bases on a deter-
ministic (constructal) principle the occurrence of geometric form in systems with internal
flows. The same principle of global optimization subject to constraints allow us to antici-
pate the natural (animate and inanimate) flow architectures that surround us. The lecture
starts with the example of the optimal spatial distribution of material (e.g., heat ex-
changer equipment) in power plants. Similarly, void space can be allocated optimally to
Adrian Bejan construct flow channels in the volume occupied by a heat generating system. The lecture
Fellow ASME, continues with the optimization of the path for heat flow between a volume and one point.
J. A. Jones Professor of Mechanical It shows that when the heat flow can choose between at least two paths, low conductivity
Engineering, versus high conductivity, the optimal flow structure for minimal global resistance in
Duke University, steady flow is a tree. Nearly the same tree is deduced by minimizing the time of discharge
Durham, NC 27708-0300 in the flow from a volume to one point. Analogous tree-shaped flows are constructed in
e-mail: abejan@duke.edu pure fluid flows, and in flow through a heterogeneous porous medium. The optimization of
trees that combine heat transfer and fluid flow is illustrated by means of two-dimensional
trees of plate fins. The method is extended to the superposition of two fluid trees in
counterflow, as in vascularized tissues under the skin. The two trees in counterflow are
one tree of convective heat currents that effect the loss of body heat. It is shown that the
optimized geometry of the tree is responsible for the proportionalities between body heat
loss and body size raised to the power 3/4, and between breathing time and body size
raised to the power 1/4. The optimized structures are robust with respect to changes in
some of the externally specified parameters. When more degrees-of-freedom are allowed,
the optimized structure looks more natural. The lecture outlines a unique opportunity for
engineers to venture beyond their discipline, and to construct an engineering theory on
the origin and workings of naturally organized systems. 关S0022-1481共00兲02403-8兴
Keywords: Crystal Growth, Geophysical, Heat Exchangers, Heat Transfer, Natural Con-
vection, Optimization, Second Law, Topology, Constructal
Looking Back optimizations that we, the engineers, perform routinely in thermo-
fluid system design can help all of us make better sense of the
First, I want to thank the Max Jakob Memorial Award Com-
natural 共animate and inanimate兲 architectures that surround us.
mittee for this greatest honor in heat transfer. I consider myself
very fortunate, to be honored at this stage in my career, and to Better sense means a simpler, easier to understand, and more
have so many friends in heat transfer and thermodynamics all over general summary of explanations of what we see in nature. Such a
the world. summary is called principle or law. The thirst for better sense—
Research has a lot to do with luck. I have been very lucky, not for rationalizing—has always been the driving force in the historic
only for coming to America young and at MIT, but also for en- development of science.
countering extraordinary role models in my path. My cryogenics There are three aspects of this idea that I emphasize in this
theses advisor at MIT, Prof. Joseph L. Smith, Jr., introduced me to lecture and in a new book 共关1兴兲. First, to start from principle and
the second law and the legitimate role of entropy generation con- to arrive through a mental viewing in the powerful position of
siderations in engineering in general. My postdoctoral advisor in predicting geometric forms that appear in nature is to practice
Berkeley, Prof. Chang-Lin Tien, changed my direction toward theory. The time arrow of theory, from principle to nature, runs
fundamental research and the mainstream of heat transfer. The against the time arrow of empiricism, which begins with nature—
early work that he and I contributed to the now developed fields of the unexplained observation. Empiricism has been the preferred
natural convection in enclosures and convection in porous media method in the study of naturally organized systems, from river
was the result of his vision and coaching. and lung morphology to turbulent eddies and fractal geometry.
The second aspect is useful to us as engineers. Engineering is
the science of systems and processes with purpose. It is the sci-
Looking Ahead ence of the useful. By identifying the principle that accounts for
Instead of a review of highlights from my research past, in this geometric form in natural flow we improve our own vision as
lecture I propose to discuss an issue that has always been and designers, as creators. For example, nature impresses us with a
always will be important. The basic idea is that the constrained multitude of tree-shaped flows: Each tree flow connects an infinity
of points 共volume, area兲 with a single point 共source, sink兲. Per-
Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF
haps, we can use similar structures in engineered systems that
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received and accepted by the Heat Transfer Division, require similar volume-point connections.
March 20, 2000. Technical Editor: J. R. Howell. The third aspect has to do with the role of engineering in soci-
ety. Once a noble and revered occupation 共think of Leonardo da heating (Q H ) into working 共W兲, and to do it as well as possible.
Vinci, Sadi Carnot, and the airplane builders during World War ‘‘Well,’’ or better, means more W from the given input Q H ,
II兲, engineering is now taken for granted. Everywhere we look, which is fixed. ‘‘As well as possible’’ means that the pursuit of
from university campus politics to the Nobel prize, engineering ‘‘better’’ is subjected to several constraints, Q H and other physi-
ranks either low or not at all on the ladder of respect. The engi- cal 共size兲 and economic constraints.
neering reality is a lot brighter. Scientists of all ages and types A power plant owes its irreversibility to many factors, one of
have pondered the origin of shape and structure in nature. They which is the transfer of heat across finite temperature differences.
have been wondering about our own origins. Zoologists and geo- This effect has been isolated in Fig. 1 共关2兴兲. The power plant is the
physicists speak quite freely of design, function, necessity, and vertical segment marked between the high temperature T H and the
optimization in their descriptions of natural patterns. Optimization ambient temperature T L . The heat input Q H and the rejected heat
implies an objective, or a purpose. All these are engineering con- Q L must be driven by temperature differences: The white tem-
cepts. This is why I believe that engineers are destined to play a perature gaps T H ⫺T HC and T LC ⫺T L account for some of the
role in the quest for a rational basis—a principle—for the genera- space occupied by the power plant. Heat transfer surfaces 共shown
tion of geometric form in nature. in yellow兲 reside in these spaces. The rest of the space is reserved
Many of our engineering colleagues are already proving this for the rest of the power plant: For simplicity, this inner space
through bioengineering. Their designs blur the supposed demar- 共green兲 is assumed to be irreversibility free,
cations between the natural and the artificial. Engineers, with their
language and feel for the concepts of objective 共purpose兲, con- QL QH
S gen⫽ ⫺ ⫽0. (1)
straints and optimization, are ideally positioned to define the the- T LC T HC
oretical agenda for life science in this new century.
What I am describing is a position that I have advocated All the irreversibility of this power plant model is concentrated in
throughout my work. Our engineering methods are undergoing the two temperature gaps. The simplest heat transfer model for
changes and improvements. In parallel with academic pursuits, it these is the proportionality between heat current and temperature
is extremely important that we test the usefulness of our methods difference,
not only in the real world of engineering but also in the equally
Q H ⫽C H 共 T H ⫺T HC 兲 (2)
real world of natural systems. If our methods show promise, we
can improve them further in partnerships and disputes with physi- Q L ⫽C L 共 T LC ⫺T L 兲 . (3)
cists, zoologists, botanists, and medical researchers. In this way
even our teaching improves, because it becomes more immediate Each thermal conductance (C H ,C L ) is proportional to its area for
and reaches a much wider audience. Even better, the value of heat transfer. This is why the simplest way to account for the
engineering to society becomes more evident to larger groups. finiteness of the heat transfer surface available to the power plant
is to recognize the constraint 共关3兴兲
Distribution of Material in Energy Systems
C H ⫹C L ⫽C (4)
I begin with the most basic example of how heat transfer prin-
ciples shed light on why energy systems are imperfect, and why where C is fixed. This constraint is adequate when the overall heat
they possess geometric structure—why their hardware is arranged transfer coefficients of the two surfaces are equal. More general
in certain amounts, and in certain ways in space. A heat engine or constraints, valid for unequal heat transfer coefficients, can also
power plant is a system with purpose. Its purpose is to change be used.
Fig. 1 Model of power plant with two heat transfer surfaces, and the maximization of power
output subject to fixed heat input „ Q H … and fixed total heat transfer surface „ C …
Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 431
The analytical model is completed by the first law, written for 共channels, hydraulic diameters, fins, etc.兲. The volume of the de-
the power plant as a closed system operating in steady state or in vice is constrained, while the objective is to maximize in a global
an integral number of cycles, W⫽Q H ⫺Q L . Combining this with sense the thermal conductance between the solid parts ‘‘com-
the preceding relations, we obtain the power output as a function pacted’’ into this volume and the fluid stream that bathes all the
of the conductance allocation fraction x⫽C H /C, parts.
The opportunity for optimizing internal geometry becomes evi-
W T L /T H
冉冊
⫽1⫺ . (5) dent if we focus on single-stream heat exchangers intended for
QH QH 1 1 cooling electronics. The global thermal conductance of the elec-
1⫺ ⫹ tronics is the ratio between the total rate of heat generation in the
T H C x 1⫺x
package 共q兲 and the maximum excess temperature registered in
This expression can be maximized with respect to x, and the result the hot spots (T max⫺Tmin). The entrance temperature of the cool-
is x opt⫽1/2, or ant is T min . Desirable are designs with more components and
C H,opt⫽C L,opt . (6) circuitry installed in a given volume: Desirable is a larger q. This
can be accommodated by increasing the ceiling temperature T max
In conclusion, there is an optimal way to allocate the con- 共usually limited by the design of electronics兲, and by increasing
strained hardware 共C兲 to the two ends of the power plant, that is, the conductance ratio q/(T max⫺Tmin). The latter sends us on a
if the maximization of power output subject to fixed heat input course of geometry optimization, because the conductance is dic-
(Q H ) and fixed size 共C兲 is the purpose. Equation 共6兲 also holds for tated by the flow geometry.
refrigerating machines modeled in the same way 共关4兴兲. We can expect an optimal geometry by reasoning based on the
The maximization of W is shown graphically in Fig. 1. Small comparison shown in Fig. 2. Three competing designs are illus-
conductances strangle the flow of heat, and demand large tem- trated. The volume and the heat generation rate 共q兲 are the same in
perature differences. The power output is large when the tempera- each design. The hot spots are shown in red: to maximize the
ture difference across the green 共reversible兲 compartment is large. global thermal conductance means to minimize the areas covered
The first and third frames of Fig. 1 show that when the two con- by red. In the first frame the spacings are wide, the heat transfer
ductances are highly dissimilar in size, large temperature gaps are surface is small, the global conductance is small, and, conse-
present, and the power output is small. The best irreversible 共im- quently, each heat-generating part is overheated 共engulfed in red兲.
perfect兲 performance is somewhere in the middle, where the con- The competing extreme is shown in the third frame. When the
ductances are comparable in size. spacings are too tight, the coolant cannot flow through the pack-
There is now a large body of literature in which models similar age. The heat current is removed only by raising the temperature
to Fig. 1 are used for the purpose of identifying the existence of of the entire volume, including the outlet temperature of the cool-
basic tradeoffs in the conceptual design of all kinds of energy ant that manages to flow through.
systems. These models are used for orientation. More refined op- An optimal spacing size exists somewhere between the two
timizations, which are based on increasingly more realistic mod- extremes. In this design the void volume allocated to each channel
els, come later in the design process 共关5兴兲. The defining character- is used to the maximum: In every channel, the boundary layers
istic of this relatively new sector of heat transfer is the merge just as the coolant flows out of the channel. Very compact
combination of heat transfer with thermodynamics in the pursuit and successful formulas for determining optimal spacings for
of optimization of global performance subject to global con- cooling heat-generating volumes have been developed based on
straints. Reviews of the current activity in this area are given in a the tradeoff identified in Fig. 2. Reviews can be found in 共关23–
new line of books 共关6–16兴兲. 26兴兲. For example, if the volume is occupied by a vertical stack of
Why start with power plants, when the lecture is also about equidistant heat-generating plates of height H, the optimal plate-
structure in nature? The optimal allocation of conductance means, to-plate spacing for laminar natural convection is 共关27–29兴兲
geometrically, the distribution of hardware in a certain way, in
space. Better performance is achieved when the distribution is D opt
relatively uniform, or balanced. Thermodynamically this means ⬵2.3Ra ⫺1/4
H (7)
H
that the generation of entropy in the system—its irreversibility—is
distributed in a relatively balanced way between the parts that where RaH ⫽g ␤ (T max⫺Tmin)H3 /(␣␯). Similar results have been
operate with losses. The greater system works best when its im- found for other internal configurations of volumetrically heated
perfection is spread around, so that more and more of the internal volumes cooled by natural convection. If the heat generation oc-
parts are ‘‘stressed’’ as much as the hardest working points. The curs in a bundle of equidistant cylinders with diameter D and
more we think of engineered systems in this way, the more they narrowest spacing S between adjacent cylinders, the optimal spac-
look and function like living systems. ing has the scale 共关30兴兲
冉冊
The structure of animals has been a big puzzle in biology for 1/12
centuries. From the mouse and the salamander, to the crocodile S opt H
⬃ Ra ⫺1/4
H (8)
and the whale, animals are correlated by surprisingly precise H D
power laws between body size and other flow and performance
parameters 共关17–22兴兲. Metabolism, or the rate at which the exergy where H is the height of the entire volume. Note that Eq. 共8兲 is
of food is consumed, is distributed in balanced and tightly corre- nearly the same as Eq. 共7兲. Expressed in terms of the cylinder
lated proportions among the organs. These proportions are fairly diameter and RaD ⫽g ␤ (T max⫺Tmin)D3/(␣␯), Eq. 共8兲 becomes
冉冊
insensitive to animal size. 1/3
S opt H
To predict the distribution of metabolic rate through the body is ⬃ Ra ⫺1/4
D . (9)
to predict the structure of the animal—its parts, their relative D D
sizes, and their relative irreversibilities. One way to construct a The validity of this prediction was confirmed numerically and
theory of structure in living systems is to treat them as energy experimentally. The numerical data were fitted within 1.7 percent
systems with flows, constraints and, above all, purpose, just as in by a relation suggested by Eq. 共9兲,
Fig. 1. This is the theoretical line that is explored in this lecture.
Distribution of Void Space for Flow Channels

S opt
D
⫽2.72冉冊
H
D
1/3
Ra ⫺1/4
D ⫹0.263. (10)
Another familiar story that holds new meaning in biological Constrained volumes with optimized arrays of horizontal heated
design is the sizing of internal details for compact heat exchangers cylinders were also considered by Fisher and Torrance 关31兴. Simi-
Fig. 2 Three designs for the internal structure of a fixed volume with fixed total heat
generating rate and stream of coolant flowing vertically. The objective is to maximize the
global thermal conductance between the volume and the stream, which is equivalent to
minimizing the area with hot-spot temperatures „red….
lar spacings were optimized for staggered vertical plates as- vertical channels through which the ambient air cools the swarm.
sembled in a fixed heat-generating volume 共关32兴兲. As shown in Fig. 3, the bees construct wider channels when the
If the cooling is by forced convection with fixed pressure dif- ambient air is warm and the required air flow rate is larger
ference (⌬ P) maintained between the ends of a stack of plates of 共关39,40兴兲. Inanimate systems also have optimal internal spacings.
length L, the optimal spacing is 共关33兴兲 Cracks form at surprisingly regular intervals in volumetrically
D opt
⬵2.7⌸ L⫺1/4 (11)
L
where ⌸ L ⫽⌬ P•L 2 /( ␮␣ ) is a new ‘‘pressure drop number.’’ Pe-
trescu 关34兴 commented on the similarity between Eqs. 共7兲 and
共11兲, and pointed out that the pressure drop number is as impor-
tant as the Rayleigh number. The pressure drop number does for
the optimization of forced convection design what the Rayleigh
number does for natural convection. This observation is rein-
forced by the optimal-spacing formulas developed for other ge-
ometries designed for forced convection: staggered plates 共关35兴兲,
round cylinders in cross-flow 共关36,37兴兲, and three-dimensional
square pin fins on a heat generating surface cooled by impinging
flow 共关38兴兲.
From Principle to Internal Structure

We are entitled to disregard for a moment the reasoning that
generated the optimal spacings reviewed in the preceding section.
We may act as natural scientists, cut open the ‘‘animal’’—the
electronics package, heat exchanger, or electric winding—and
marvel at the spatial organization of the diversity that we see. We
marvel also at how much alike are the internal structures of con-
temporary systems 共e.g., two competing personal computers兲, in
the same way that a zoologist marvels at the similarity in bron-
chial tube sizes and numbers in two animals that have nearly the
same mass. In this way we observe structure, and, just like the
natural scientist, we may go on and measure, correlate, and cata-
logue 共classify兲 the dimensions and patterns that we see.
In contrast with this empirical course, the reasoning exposed in
this paper has nothing to do with observations. We invoked con-
sistently a single principle of purpose 共global maximization兲 and
constraints, and from this principle we deduced the optimal inter- Fig. 3 The regulation of temperature in a swarm of honeybees
nal structure. We practiced theory. The discovery is that geomet- „†39‡…. The left side shows the structure of the swarm cluster at
a low ambient temperature. The right side is for a high ambient
ric form 共internal structuring兲 emerges as the mechanism through temperature, and shows the construction of almost equidistant
which the system achieves its global objective. ventilation channels with a characteristic spacing. Indicated
We are now at that late moment in time when we look at nature. are also the heat transfer from the swarm „arrows…, areas of
Natural systems also develop internal spacings. Bees control the active metabolism „crosses…, areas of resting metabolism
hot-spot temperatures in their swarm by opening nearly parallel „dots…, and local approximate temperature.
cannot be made at infinitesimally small scales throughout V, be-
cause the k p paths must be of finite length so that they can be
interconnected to channel the total heat current 共q兲 to the heat-sink
point. There is only one option, namely:
共i兲 to optimize the allocation of conductive path to one sub-
system 共volume element兲 at a time; and
共ii兲 to optimize the manner in which the volume elements are
assembled and their k p paths are connected.
The result developed in 共关42兴兲 is purely geometric: Any finite-
size portion of the heat generating volume can have its shape
optimized such that its overall thermal resistance is minimal. Op-
timized volume elements are then assembled into a larger volume
the shape of which is also optimized. This assembly and geomet-
ric optimization sequence is repeated in steps, from the smallest
volume element to the largest assembly, until the given volume is
covered. One of the features of the structure that emerges—a
byproduct of the construction—is a network of k p paths that is
shaped as a tree. All the features of the structure of the (k 0 ,k p )
composite material that covers the volume, and all the features of
the associate tree of k p paths are the result of a purely theoretical,
deterministic process guided by a single principle.
The simplest example of shape optimization is provided by the
two-dimensional volume element represented by the rectangle
H 0 ⫻L 0 in Fig. 5. The area H 0 ⫻L 0 is fixed but its shape may
vary. The amount of k p material allocated to H 0 L 0 is fixed, and is
represented by the volume fraction ␾ 0 ⫽D 0 /H 0 , which is a ma-
terials or manufacturing constraint. The heat current (q 0
⫽q ⵮ H 0 L 0 W) generated by this volume element is collected by a
blade (D 0 ,L 0 ) of high-conductivity material, and taken out of the
volume through the point M 0 . The rest of the H 0 ⫻L 0 boundary is
adiabatic, and W is the dimension perpendicular to the plane H 0
Fig. 4 Patterns of cracks on the ground ⫻L 0 . The volumetric heat generation rate q ⵮ is uniform. The hot
spot occurs at the point P, which is the farthest from the heat sink
M 0 . Since the heat current q 0 is fixed, the minimization of the
shrinking solids 共Fig. 4兲. The spacing between cracks has been thermal resistance of the volume element is equivalent to the
deduced on the same basis of constrained maximization of global minimization of the peak excess temperature—the temperature
conductance 共关41兴兲. drop (⌬T 0 ) from P to M 0 .
When k 0 /k p Ⰶ ␾ 0 Ⰶ1, the conduction through the k 0 material is
Distribution of Channels „Streams… for Volume-Point practically parallel to y, while the conduction through the k p ma-
Flow terial is along the x-axis. In this limit, ⌬T 0 or the volume-to-point
In Figs. 2–4 the flow of heat was from a fixed volume to a thermal resistance ⌬T 0 /(q ⵮ H 0 L 0 ), is the sum of two contribu-
stream that flows through the volume. In particular, Fig. 2 is rel- tions, one for k 0 conduction from the corner (L 0 ,H 0 /2) to (L 0 ,0),
evant to the optimization of the internal structure of electronic and the other for k p conduction from (L 0 ,0) to the origin 共0,0兲
assemblies. In such systems the objective is to install a maximum 共关42兴兲:
amount of electronics 共i.e., heat generation rate兲 in a given volume
⌬T 0 1 H0 k0 L0
such that the maximum temperature does not exceed a certain ⫽ ⫻ ⫹ ⫻ . (12)
level. The technological frontier is being pushed toward smaller q ⵮ H 0 L 0 /k 0 8 L 0 2 ␾ 0 k p H 0
package dimensions. There comes a point where miniaturization This quantity can be minimized geometrically, that is, by varying
makes convection cooling impractical, because the cooling chan- the shape of the system. The derivation of shape from principle is
nels would take too much space. The only option left is to channel illustrated in color in Fig. 6. The optimal shape is
the generated heat by conduction, along paths 共inserts兲 of very
high thermal conductivity (k p ).
Conduction paths too take space: Designs with fewer and
smaller paths are better suited for the miniaturization evolution.
冉冊冉冊
H0
L0 opt
⫽2
k 0 /k p
␾0
1/2
. (13)
The fundamental problem is how to connect an entire volume with

one point 共the heat sink兲, cf. the formulation given in 共关42兴兲:
‘‘Consider a finite-size volume in which heat is being gener-
ated at every point, and which is cooled through a small
patch 共heat sink兲 located on its boundary. A finite amount of
high-conductivity (k p ) material is available. Determine the
optimal distribution of k p material through the given volume
such that the highest temperature is minimized.’’
The purpose of any portion of the conducting path k p is to be
‘‘in touch’’ with the material that generates heat volumetrically.
This material fills the volume (V), and its thermal conductivity is
low (k 0 ). The optimal-access problem reduces to the geometric Fig. 5 Elemental volume with uniform volumetric heat genera-
problem of allocating conducting path length to volume of k 0 tion rate and high-conductivity insert along its axis of symme-
material, or vice versa. A key observation is this: The allocation try „†42‡…
Fig. 7 The first construct: a large number of elemental vol-
umes connected to a central high-conductivity path „†42‡…
artist. Again, every single geometric feature of the cooling scheme

shown in Fig. 9 is the result of analysis. The fact that at higher
orders of assembly the optimized high-conductivity paths exhibit
the ‘‘bifurcated’’ 共dichotomous兲 structure of natural tree networks
is also a result, i.e., not an assumption. At no time did the designer
borrow from nature.
The geometrically optimal construction started in Figs. 5–9 can
be continued to a higher order of assembly, until the structured
composite (k 0 ,k p ) covers the given space. One interesting feature
in this limit is that the construction settles into a recurring pattern
of pairing 共or bifurcation, from the reverse point of view兲, in
which the integer 2 is a result of geometric optimization. For
example, Fig. 10 shows this pairing and size doubling pattern. If
the shaded corner of Fig. 10 is one of the optimized fourth con-
structs of Fig. 9, then the large square domain of Fig. 10 repre-
sents the optimized eighth construct. All the fibers that are visible
in Fig. 10 have the same conductivity (k p ). The geometric param-
eters, volume fractions occupied by high-conductivity material
( ␾ i ), and the global resistance of each construct, are reported
analytically in tabular form in 共关2,42兴兲.
Fig. 6 How optimal shape is derived from the minimization of

global resistance between a volume and one point. Three com-
peting designs are shown. The volume and the heat generation From Principle to Tree-Shaped Flow
rate are fixed. Variable is the aspect ratio of the rectangular
domain. The resistance is proportional to the peak temperature We saw that the geometric optimization of flow access between
difference, which is measured between the hot spots „red… and a volume and one point takes us to the geometric structure called
the heat sink „blue…. The middle shape minimizes the areas cov- ‘‘tree.’’ This geometric pattern and method of deduction bring
ered by red, and has the smallest volume-point resistance. under the same deterministic umbrella a wide variety of natural
phenomena, the ‘‘tree’’ structure which so far has been assumed
to lie beyond the powers of determinism. The examples are liter-
The same geometric optimization principle applies at larger ally everywhere: trees, roots, leaves, river deltas, river basins,
scales. The next larger volume is an assembly—a construct—of lightning, streets, and the pulmonary, nervous and vascular
optimized elemental volumes. Figure 7 was drawn intentionally to systems.
look like Fig. 5, so that we may see at a glance that the optimi- The method has technological and theoretical implications:
zation of the H 1 ⫻L 1 shape is the same problem as the optimiza- Technologically, it is possible to construct in a few simple geo-
tion of the H 0 ⫻L 0 shape. In place of the low conductivity k 0 , this metric steps a near-optimal network for channeling a current that
time we have the effective conductivity k 1 ⫽k p D 0 /H 0 ⫽k p ␾ 0 . is generated volumetrically. This finding is important in practice:
When the total volume of k p material contained by the first con- If the designer were to start with the given volume V, he or she
struct is fixed, in addition to an optimal shape (H 1 /L 1 ) there is an would have to guess 共postulate兲 an existing network, and then
optimal way to allocate the k p material, i.e., an optimal ratio optimize 共numerically and randomly兲 a prohibitively large number
D 1 /D 0 . of parameters, as is done currently in the numerical simulations of
At the second-construct level the optimal external aspect ratio river drainage basins and vascularized tissues 共关44,45兴兲.
is H 2 /L 2 ⫽2, as in the examples shown in Fig. 8. This figure is Theoretically, it means that at the basis of the tree architecture
discussed in more detail in the section on More Degrees of Free- of many animate and inanimate systems rests one design prin-
dom. For example, on the left side of Fig. 8 there are only two ciple: the volume-constrained minimization of the global resis-
first constructs assembled into the second construct, and each first tance to flow between one point and a finite volume 共an infinite
construct has eight elemental volumes 共see the black & white number of points兲. Reliance on such a universal design principle
diagram on top of the color plate兲. There are also optimal ratios of makes the tree network structure—its main features—predictable,
thicknesses, D 1 /D 0 and D 2 /D 1 , where D 2 is the thickness of the contrary to the prevailing doctrine.
central 共thickest兲 high-conductivity insert. To appreciate how much is new in this geometric construction,
Numerical optimizations of the elemental system, first construct it is important to note that one portion of the network pattern
and second construct are exhibited in 共关43兴兲 for the more general 共namely, the portion formed by the higher-order assemblies, Fig.
case where the assumptions k 0 /k p Ⰶ ␾ 0 Ⰶ1 are not made. 10兲 is not new. It was first proposed in physiology as a three-
In Fig. 9 we see the optimized fourth construct and its distribu- dimensional ‘‘heuristic model’’ for the vascular system 共关46兴兲,
tion of k p material. The square shape of this assembly is an ‘‘op- where it was known empirically that each tube is followed by
timization result,’’ not an arbitrary choice made by the graphic two smaller tubes, i.e., each tube undergoes bifurcation. It was
Fig. 8 The internal and external geometry of a second construct optimized numerically „␾ 2 Ä0.1, k p Õ k 0 Ä300, n 1 Ä8; left side, n 2 Ä2; right side, n 2 Ä4… „†49‡…
Fig. 9 The optimized fourth construct „†42‡…
Fig. 10 The optimized eighth construct „†42‡…

also known that the tube diameter must decrease by a constant
factor (2 ⫺1/3) during each bifurcation: This result had been de-
rived based on flow resistance minimization 共关47兴兲 coupled with
the assumption that each tube is continued by ‘‘two’’ tubes 共see
also the section Tree of Convective Heat Currents兲. The descrip- More Degrees-of-Freedom
tion of these geometric constructions was made popular through The heat trees of Figs. 8–10 do not look entirely ‘‘natural.’’
the advent of fractal geometry: In fact, a two-dimensional version This is due to the simplifying assumptions on which their deriva-
of Cohn’s 关46兴 branching fluid network was presented without tion was based. For example, the high-conductivity inserts were
theory in the book of Mandelbrot 关48兴, where it is proposed heu- always drawn with constant thickness and perpendicular to their
ristically as a ‘‘model of the lung.’’ tributaries. These features served their purpose. They kept the
Fig. 11 Optimal shapes of elemental volumes with spacings at the tips of the high-conductivity channels:
the effect of varying k̃ Ä k p Õ k 0 and ␾ 0 Ä D 0 Õ H 0 „†49‡…
Table 1 The effect of increasing the number of first constructs
„ n 2 … in the optimized second construct when ␾ 2 Ä0.1 and k̃
Ä300 „†43‡…
Figure n2 (T max⫺Tmin)mink0 /(q⵮A2) (H 2 /L 2 ) 1/2

opt
13共a兲 2 0.0379 1.412

13共b兲 4 0.0354 1.375
13共c兲 6 0.0374 1.360
changes. The optimal inclination is similar to that of tributaries in

nature: Pine needles, rivulets and bronchial ramifications point
away from the root of the tree.
Figure 12 also shows that the volume-to-point resistance of the
construct, T̂ min⫽关(Tmax⫺Tmin)k0 /q⵮A1兴min , decreases only margin-
ally 共by 5.8 percent兲 as the angle ␣ changes from the perpendicu-
lar position ( ␣ ⫽0deg) to the optimal position ( ␣ ⯝4deg). The
optimized tip spacings of Fig. 11 produce reductions of 20 percent
Fig. 12 The optimization of the angle of confluence between in the global elemental resistance.
tributaries and their common stem in a first construct „␾ 1 These relatively unimportant improvements tell a very impor-
Ä0.1, k̃ Ä50, n 1 Ä4… „†43‡… tant story: The tree design is robust with respect to various modi-
fications in its internal structure. This means that the global per-
formance of the system is relatively insensitive to changes in
some of the internal geometric details. Trees that are not identical
number of geometric degrees-of-freedom to a minimum, and in have nearly identical performance, and nearly identical macro-
this way they made possible the closed-form presentation of the scopic features such as the external shape.
geometric optimization. The robustness of the tree design sheds light on why natural
Constructal trees look more and more natural if their freedom to tree flows are never identical geometrically. They do not have to
provide easier access to their internal currents is expanded. In the be, if the maximization of global performance is their guiding
elemental system of Fig. 5 it was assumed that the k p channel principle. The ways in which the details of natural trees may differ
stretches all the way across the volume. When this assumption is from case to case are without number because, unlike in the con-
not made, we find numerically that there is an optimal spacing structions presented in this paper, the number of degrees-of-
between the tip of the k p channel and the adiabatic boundary of freedom of the emerging form is not constrained. Local details
the elemental volume 共关49兴兲. Figure 11 shows five cases of opti- differ from case to case because of unknown and unpredictable
mized elemental volumes with spacings at the tips, i.e., with k 0 local features such as the heterogeneity of the natural flow me-
material all around the tips of the k p blades. This figure also dium, and the history and lack of uniformity of the volumetric
shows how the optimized elemental volume—the smallest build- flow rate that is distributed over the system. Marvelous illustra-
ing block of the constructal design—changes as the proportions of tions of this element of ‘‘chance’’ are provided by seemingly
the composite material change: The elemental shape becomes irregular river drainage basins all over the world. The point is that
more slender as either k̃(⫽k p /k 0 ) or ␾ 0 (⫽D 0 /H 0 ) increases. the global performance and structure 共tree兲 are predictable, and
When the angle formed between each tributary channel and its the principle that takes the system to this level of performance is
central stem is allowed to vary, numerical calculations of the two- deterministic.
dimensional heterogeneous conduction field show that there exists Robustness continues to impress as we increase the number of
an optimal angle for minimal volume-to-point resistance at the degrees-of-freedom of the geometric design. In Fig. 13 we see the
construct level 共关43兴兲. This effect is illustrated for a first construct results of a fully numerical optimization of the second construct
in Figs. 12, where, for simplicity, it was assumed that all the with perpendicular and constant-thickness inserts (D 0 ,D 1 ,D 2 ),
tributaries are tilted at the same 共variable兲 angle. The position of where all the other geometric parameters were allowed to vary—
the hot spots moves along the top and bottom sides as the angle the aspect ratios of all the rectangles, large and small, the number
of elemental volumes in each first construct (n 1 ), and the number
of first constructs in each second construct (n 2 ). The three de-
signs shown in Fig. 13 have been optimized with respect to all the
free parameters except n 2 , and they have been drawn to scale
关 n 1,opt⫽8, (D 1 /D 0 ) opt⫽5, (D 2 /D 0 )⫽10兴. The figure shows visu-
ally the effect of fine-tuning the number of first constructs incor-
porated in the second construct (n 2 ).
The same effect is documented numerically in Table 1. The size
of the second construct (A 2 ⫽H 2 L 2 ) is fixed. The cold spot (T min)
is at the root of the tree, and the two hot spots are in the farthest
共left-side兲 corners. The aspect ratio H 2 /L 2 refers to the vertical/
horizontal external dimensions of the largest rectangle. The best
second construct is the one with n 2 ⫽4; however, the neighboring
designs (n 2 ⫽2,6) perform nearly as well. The global resistances
of designs 共a兲, 共b兲 and 共c兲 agree within seven percent even though
their internal structures are markedly different. Their optimized
external shapes are also nearly the same. The case of Fig. 13共a兲
was optimized further in Fig. 8, by allowing spacings 共k 0 mate-
Fig. 13 The second construct optimized for minimum resis- rial兲 all around the tips of the elemental (D 0 ) inserts 共关49兴兲. In
tance in steady volume-point flow, and the effect of changing Fig. 8 the dimensionless temperature is defined as T̃⫽(T
the number of first constructs, n 2 ; see also Table 1 „†43‡… ⫺T min)k0 /(q⵮A2).
Fig. 14 The second construct optimized for minimum time of discharge from
a volume to one point, and the effect of changing the number of first con-
structs, n 2 „␾ 2 Ä0.1, k̃ Ä300, D 1 Õ D 0 Ä5, D 2 Õ D 0 Ä10… „†50‡…
Once again, the global optimization principle leads us to very Compared are three optimized constructs of the second kind, for
robust 共invariant兲 features such as the global performance level which we minimized the cooldown time by varying all the geo-
and the external shape of the construct. Surprisingly, we will ar- metric features except n 2 . The optimized structures are drawn to
rive at the same conclusions via a completely different optimiza- scale. Listed under each drawing are the assumed number of first
tion in Fig. 14. Changes in the internal tree structure, such as constructs in the structure (n 2 ), the optimized external shape
overgrowth and surgery 共adding or cutting branches兲 has almost Ĥ 2,opt⫽(H 2 /L 2 ) 1/2
opt , and the minimized dimensionless cooldown
no effect on the globally optimized features. time, t̂ c,min⫽tc,min ␣0 /A2 , where ␣ 0 is the thermal diffusivity of the
k 0 material. The three designs have practically the same global
Time-Dependent Discharge From Volume to Point performance ( t̂ c,min) and external shape. Their robustness and in-
In Figs. 5–13 we saw how the tree structure is derived from ternal details support in every respect the conclusions reached on
principle 共minimum global resistance, size constraints兲, when the the basis of maximizing global performance in steady flow be-
flow is steady from volume to point, or point to volume. Practi- tween a volume and one point 共Fig. 13兲.
cally the same structure is deduced when the objective is to mini- The volume-point discharge optimization shows clearly why
mize the time of discharge of a volume to a sink, as in lightning, the principle recognized in this work is new on the currently ac-
exhaling, and river basin construction after a sudden downpour. cepted background. The approach to equilibrium, the direction of
The maximized performance in steady flow is the same as the time, or the difference between before and after, is the domain
minimization of the time of approach to equilibrium: The mecha- covered by the second law of thermodynamics. The objective and
nism that allows the system to reach this objective is the construc- constraints 共constructal兲 principle invoked in this work accounts
tion of optimal flow shape and structure. for an equally important part of nature, that is, of everything: The
We demonstrated the construction of the tree for volume-point mechanism for reaching equilibrium faster is the construction of
discharge by minimizing geometrically the cooldown time of an macroscopic flow architecture, i.e., the generation of geometric
initially isothermal conducting solid 共k 0 , without heat genera- form.
tion兲, which is placed suddenly in contact with a boundary sink
point (T min) 关50兴. With reference to the elemental volume of Fig. More Efficient Structures Look More ‘‘Natural’’
5 this new problem means that q ⵮ ⫽0, and at the time t⫽0 the An interesting trend becomes visible as we continue to relax the
entire A 0 ⫽H 0 L 0 rectangle is at the temperature T i . The energy geometric optimization, and increase the number of degrees-of-
stored in this volume flows out through the origin. All the tem- freedom optimized at every volume scale. This work was illus-
peratures decrease, however, the slowest to do so are the instan- trated in Figs. 11–13. The ultimate move in this direction is to
taneous hot spots 关 T max(t)兴 located in the farthest corners 共x abandon the assumption that the elemental volumes are rectangu-
⫽L 0 , y⫽⫾H 0 /2兲. The effective cooldown time t c is defined as lar 共关51,52兴兲. We illustrate this by reviewing chronologically the
the time when the highest temperature has reached within ten evolution of the elemental-volume design with volumetric heat
percent its final 共equilibrium兲 level, generation. This is shown in Fig. 15, where each design is optimal
T max共 t c 兲 ⫺T min and drawn to scale. The total volume, the volume fraction ( ␾ 0
⫽␧, (14) ⫽0.04) occupied by the high-conductivity material 共black兲, and
T i ⫺T min
the ratio of thermal conductivities (k p /k 0 ⫽k̃⫽575) are the same
where ␧⫽0.1. The cooldown time has a sharp minimum with in each design.
respect to the rectangle shape H 0 /L 0 . Numerical minimization of The earliest design 共Fig. 15共a兲兲 was the simplest, and the rough-
t c in the range 0.03⭐ ␾ 0 ⭐0.3 and 3⭐k̃⭐300 showed that the est. The elemental volume was assumed to be rectangular, and the
optimal elemental shape is given by the same formula as Eq. 共13兲 long k p insert was assumed to have uniform thickness, D 0 . The
in which the factor 2 is replaced by 2.11—not a significant thermal resistance is minimum when the large rectangle has a
difference. certain shape—an optimal slenderness ratio. The hot spots are
That the optimized structure in volume-point discharge is the concentrated in the two corners (T max) that are situated the far-
same as in volume-point steady flow is stressed further by Fig. 14. thest relative to the heat sink. See also Figs. 5 and 6.
Fig. 15 Evolution of the optimized elemental-volume design for minimum flow resistance be-
tween a volume and one point „†52‡…. The numbers in the right column indicate the global
volume-point resistance as a multiple of the resistance of design „d….
The resistance of the optimized elemental rectangle was low- degrees-of-freedom optimized are the aspect ratio of the outer
ered by six percent after abandoning the constant-D 0 feature, and triangle and the shape of the high conductivity inserts (D 0 ⬃x).
optimizing the profile of the k p channel. In the design shown in The resistance of design 共c兲 exceeds by only six percent the resis-
Fig. 15共b兲, two degrees-of-freedom were optimized: the slender- tance of design 共d兲.
ness ratio of the rectangle, and the shape function of the high- In the triangle-in-triangle structure, the formation of continuous
conductivity blade, D 0 ⬃x 1/2, where x is measured away from the hot-spot lines has its origin in the optimization of the aspect ratio
thin end 共关43兴兲. The hot spots continue to reside in two points— of the external triangle. When the external triangle is too slender,
the two most distant corners (T max). the hot spot is concentrated in one point: the sharp tip of the
A more substantial reduction in volume-point resistance is reg- triangle. In the opposite extreme, the hot spots are located in the
istered when the hot spots are distributed continuously over an two corners on the side with the heat sink. The optimal slender-
optimally curved portion of the boundary 共Fig. 15共d兲兲. The design ness is in between, when the hot spot ‘‘jumps’’ from the tip of the
is said to have ‘‘constant resistance’’ because the temperature triangle to the two base corners. At that moment the hot spot
difference between each boundary point (T max) and the common traces with T max the two long sides of the triangle, and the design
heat sink (T min) is constant 共关51兴兲. Three degrees-of-freedom were acquires its constant resistance.
optimized: the outer shape (H 0 ⬃x 3/5), the slenderness ratio of the Viewed in ensemble, Fig. 15 shows that the performance im-
outer shape, and the shape of the k p insert (D 0 ⬃x 7/5). The global proves at every step, from 共a兲 to (d), and the improvement ranges
resistance of design 共d兲 is only two thirds of the resistance of from the significant to the marginal. When these elemental de-
design (a), and 71 percent of the resistance of design 共b兲. signs are assembled into larger constructs, they cover the inner-
Figure 15共c兲 shows a triangle-in-triangle approximation of the most scales of the tree structure. Designs based on elements 共c兲
most polished design 共d兲. This approximation is also a constant- and 共d兲 cover their allotted space incompletely.
resistance design with continuous hot-spot lines (T max), but the Figure 16 shows the optimized first construct that results from
external triangular shape is assumed, not optimized. The two using the best elements 共Fig. 15共d兲兲. The optimal shape of the area
new interest in a piece of classical work that, from today’s point
of view, looks even more important. The maximization of heat
transfer rate 共or Nusselt number兲 in Bénard convection was a hy-
pothesis introduced by Malkus 关54兴 and used in several studies of
convection in pure fluids and fluid-saturated porous media. It was
related by Glansdorff and Prigogine 关55兴 to a principle of entropy
generation minimization subject to imposed boundary conditions.
Constructal theory 共关53兴兲 develops the connection between con-
ductance maximization and the optimization of geometric shape
of a single finite-size flow element. In this way Malkus’ hypoth-
esis becomes part of a more direct and transparent theory of geo-
metrical shape and pattern formation in nature. Constructal theory
brings many of the advances made by others in the past under the
same determinstic umbrella 共关1兴兲.
Second constructs can be perfected in a similar way, for opti-
mal external shape of the occupied territory, and for optimal shape
of the new central k p blade of thickness D 2 共关51兴兲. Similar
progress can be made in three dimensions 共关52兴兲. At the elemental
volume level, we begin with a body of revolution with unknown
diameter variation, H 0 (x), and unknown diameter function D 0 (x)
for the high-conductivity fiber. The total volume (V 0 ) and the
volume of high-conductivity material ( ␾ 0 V 0 ) are constrained. The
Fig. 16 Optimal external and internal features of the first con-
struct with constant thermal resistance „†51‡… optimal shapes compatible with the presence of hot spots (T max)
all over the external surface of revolution are H 0 ⬃x and D 0 ⬃x.
This cone-in-cone design emerges as the configuration for con-
stant resistance at the elemental level. The cones become more
allocated to the construct is such that the vertical dimension (H 1 ) slender as the product k̃ ␾ 0 increases. The optimized first construct
of the structure increases as x 3/5, where x increases away from the exhibits H 1 ⬃x 1/2 and D 1 ⬃x, which means that the central D 1
left end. The optimal thickness (D 1 ) of the central blade 共horizon- fiber is a cone. The shape of the volume inhabited by the first
tal, black兲 increases as x 7/5. In this design the volume fraction of construct is relatively robust 共invariant兲, almost hemispherical.
k p -material in the elemental volumes ( ␾ 0 ) and the volume frac- The flow structures reviewed in this section break new ground
tion averaged over the entire first construct ( ␾ 1 ) satisfy the option several fronts. First, their performance is superior to that of
mized proportion ␾ 0 ⫽(1/2) ␾ 1 . previously optimized paths for minimum resistance to flow be-
The right side of Fig. 16 shows that the isosceles triangle in- tween a volume and one point. By allowing the external shape of
scribed in the optimized first construct has a 90 deg tip angle. the fixed-size domain to serve as a degree-of-freedom, in addition
Unlike the slenderness of the elemental rectangles and triangles to the internal structure of the high-conductivity path, it is pos-
共Fig. 15兲, which decreases with k̃ ␾ 0 , this tip angle is an invariant: sible to optimize both the shape and structure to generate designs
it is independent of k̃ ␾ 1 . that maintain a constant resistance between every peripheral point
The increased internal complexity of the first construct has the (T max) and the heat sink (T min). The architectures that emerge are
effect of decreasing dramatically the resistance in volume-to-point more efficient, and look more like the tree structures found in
flow. The global resistances of the optimized elemental volume nature 共leaves, branches, snowflakes, pine cones兲.
共Fig. 15共d兲兲 and first construct 共Fig. 16兲 are The second new aspect is that the theoretical constant-
T max⫺T min 1 resistance structures are fractals. They do not fill their allotted
⫽ (15) space completely because the addition of geometrically similar
q ⵮ A 0 /k 0 3 共 k̃ ␾ 0 兲 1/2 elemental volumes can, in principle, be continued indefinitely to-
ward the tips of the first constructs 共e.g., Fig. 16兲. These structures
T max⫺T min 8 represent a theoretical limit. They are not real because they cannot
⫽ (16) be built or seen. Only the approximate, Euclidian structures gen-
q ⵮ A 1 /k 0 9k̃ ␾ 1
erated using a finite number of elements 共with a finite-size small-
where A 1 and A 1 are the actual areas covered by k 0 material and est element兲 can be built and seen 共关2,56兴兲.
uniform heat generation (q ⵮ ) in the two figures. Comparing the Furthermore, the continuous hot-spot surfaces of the constant-
two resistances on an equal basis, namely, A 0 ⫽A 1 and ␾ 0 ⫽ ␾ 1 resistance constructs must be both isothermal (T max) and adia-
⫽ ␾ , we see that the first-construct resistance is smaller as soon as batic. The interstitial spaces that are left uncovered by the struc-
the product k̃ ␾ exceeds 64/9. This marks the transition from one ture would have to be completely inactive. Then, the uncovered
configuration 共elemental兲 to a more complex one 共first construct兲 spaces would be filled with useless material—zero heat generation
in the pursuit of better access for the volume-point current. As the rate and zero conductivity. It just does not make sense to work so
product k̃ ␾ increases above 64/9, the first-construct configuration hard on maximizing the use of the volume fraction occupied by
becomes a considerably more effective path for the current, while the dendritic heat-generating structure, when the uncovered vol-
its elemental volumes become more slender and numerous. ume is not used at all.
Other transition phenomena, all the laminar-turbulent transi- The constant-resistance structure—the fact that this geometric
tions, Rayleigh-Bénard convection, and dendrites in solidification form represents the ultimate with respect to minimizing volume-
have been predicted based on the same principle of flow access point resistance—lends credence to the thesis that as natural struc-
maximization 共关1兴兲. In particular, the optimization of access for tures evolve toward better performance in time, they also acquire
heat currents in Rayleigh-Bénard convection 共关53兴兲 leads analyti- shapes that look closer to fractal ones. The classical fractal ap-
cally to predicting the onset of transition and the entire Nu⬃Ran proach postulates a priori self-similarity, that is, scale invariance
curve, with the exponent n decreasing as Ra increases. This the- of the geometry of the objects, of ‘‘invariance in the zoom direc-
oretical progress is made not only for convection in fluids but also tion.’’ Constructal theory establishes instead relations between
for convection in porous media. These developments should re- successive scales 共‘‘scale covariance,’’ not invariance兲 as a ‘‘de-
terministic result’’ of constrained optimization 共关57兴兲. The quotes Constructal theory is about the geometry-generating principle en-
indicate concepts introduced by Nottale 关58兴, who wrote: visioned by Nottale.
‘‘One of the possible ways to understand fractals would be to Physicists, biologists, and engineers have a joint interest in the
look at the fractal behavior as the result of an optimization constructal-theory and constant-resistance concepts. These meth-
process . . . Such a combination . . . may come from a process ods provide 共i兲 direct routes to resistance minimization by design,
of optimization under constraint, or more generally of optimi- 共ii兲 rational explanations for the occurrence of flow structures in
zation of several quantities sometimes apparently contradictory nature, and 共iii兲 a deterministic basis for the repeatability, regular-
共for example兲 maximizing surface while minimizing vol- ity, and beauty of all such structures, natural and man made.
ume . . . ’’ It is fitting that we end this section on point 共iii兲, which is also
made in the upper part of Fig. 17. This figure shows the design
that the engineer would produce by covering a larger volume with
four second-construct structures of the type optimized in the se-
quence represented by Figs. 15共d兲 and 16. The heat current inte-
grated over the four quadrants of the large square domain is led by
the diagonal D 2 channels to the center of the cross, which is
cooled by a sufficiently strong stream that flows perpendicularly
to Fig. 17. The lower part of the figure shows the streaklines and
the pattern of high-permeability channels developed numerically,
in time, based on a fully deterministic erosion model of a river
drainage basin 共关59兴兲. Rain falls on every point of the square
low-permeability domain, and is driven by pressure differences
toward the central sink. The domain is made of 51⫻51 square
grains. At every time step, certain grains were selected and re-
moved 共washed downstream兲 based on the same constructal prin-
ciple: the minimization of the global volume-point resistance sub-
ject to constraints. The river basin grows and marbleizes itself into
nearly square territories that are served by central main streams.
The similarities 共origin and image兲 between this unexpected
structure 共Fig. 17, bottom兲 and the designed version 共Fig. 17, top兲
are worth contemplating. They reinforce a familiar view, which is
new when seen from the reverse. Familiar is the empirical view
that the more we look at natural systems the more we find that
they operate most efficiently. The reverse is the theoretical direc-
tion of this work: The more we invoke the constructal law the
more we discover that the deduced designs—our own drawings—
look more and more ‘‘natural.’’ The constructal principle works,
in the inanimate, the animate, and the engineered.
Trees of Fins
In this section we turn our attention to the more complex con-
figurations where the flow of heat between a finite volume and
one point is aided by the flow of a fluid. The resulting structures
are trees in which convection plays an important role, but not the
complete role. In every elemental volume convection is intimately
coupled with pure conduction, in a phenomenon of conjugate heat
transfer. The key to developing the optimal flow architecture,
from the smallest elemental volumes to larger and larger con-
structs, is to find this optimal coupling, or optimal balance be-
tween convection and conduction.
Convective flow architectures are of two types, depending on
which portions of the structure are reserved for convection. In the
first type the interstices are occupied by solid that generates heat
at every point, and conducts the heat by diffusion in the manner of
the k 0 material analyzed in Fig. 5. Convection is located in the
branches of a tree formed by ducts filled with flowing fluid. The
ramifications of two trees of this type visit each elemental volume.
One tree delivers cold fluid to each element. The other tree col-
lects the fluid heated by the element, and reconstitutes it into a
single stream that eventually leaves the volume 共关60兴兲.
The circulatory system performs its mass transfer function and
secondary heat transfer function by using a convective double-tree
structure of the first type 共see the section on Trees for Convective
Heat Currents兲. In the respiratory system the two flow trees are
Fig. 17 The top drawing shows the third construct containing
superimposed, as they rely on the same network of bronchial
four constant-resistance second constructs or eight first con- tubes, one tree during inhaling, and the other during exhaling.
structs, cf. Fig. 16 „†51‡…. The bottom figure is the river drainage Engineering applications of trees of convective channels abound
basin generated by a deterministic erosion model based on in the cooling of virtually every enclosed electrical heat-
global flow resistance minimization „†59‡…. generating system, e.g., windings of electrical machines, comput-
Fig. 18 „a… The volume AW that serves as convective heat sink for the concen-
trated heat current q , and „b… the smallest volume element defined by a single
plate fin „†64‡…
ers, and electrical and electronic packages of many types and trailing edge of each plate fin 共see the section on Distribution of
sizes. All must be cooled at every point, using forced or natural Void Space for Flow Channels兲. Conversely, the spacing is opti-
convection. mal when the time of fluid travel along W matches the thermal
In the convective tree of the second type the spaces occupied by diffusion time across the D 0 channel. This feature is illustrated in
conduction and convection are reversed. Convection is in the in- Fig. 18共c兲. The optimal spacing (H 0 ⫺D 0 ⬃H 0 ) is determined
terstices, and is coupled with pure conduction in solid parts, which uniquely by the length W and the pressure difference ⌬ P main-
form trees. Every interstitial space serves as sink or source for the tained across the swept volume, cf. Eq. 共11兲,
current that passes through the root of the tree. Numerous appli-
cations for this flow structure are found in the design of heat
transfer-enhanced surfaces for heat exchangers, and for cooling
small scale electronics. In the latter, the tree structures are better
H0
W
⬵2.7⌸ ⫺1/4
W ⫽2.7
␮␣
冉
W 2⌬ P 冊 1/4
. (18)
known as fin trees and fin bushes 共关61,62兴兲.

Let us review the constructal fin-tree problem statement, this It can be shown that the minimized thermal resistance that corre-
time with reference to the general geometry sketched in Fig. 18. sponds to this spacing is also characterized by an average heat
We consider the two-dimensional volume of frontal area A and transfer coefficient that is given approximately by 共关33兴兲
冉冊
fixed length W, where W is aligned with the free stream (U ⬁ ,T ⬁ ).
The problem consists of distributing optimally through this vol- k W2 ⌬ P 1/4
h 0 ⬵0.55 . (19)
ume a fixed amount of high-conductivity (k p ) material, which W ␮␣
takes heat from one spot on the boundary and discharges it
throughout the volume. We may think of the boundary spot 共root兲 Here k is the thermal conductivity of the fluid. The factor ⌬ P that
as the external surface of an electronic module that must be appears in Eq. 共19兲 refers to the pressure difference that is main-
cooled. In this case the volume AW is the space that is allocated tained in the W direction 共e.g., by a fan兲, where H 0 ⫻L 0 is the
for the purpose of cooling the module by forced convection. This cross section of one duct. If the H 0 -wide channel is open to one
volume constitutes a global constraint. side 共the side that would connect the tips of two successive fins兲,
As in the pure-conduction applications of the constructal and if the entire assembly is immersed in a stream of velocity U ⬁ ,
method 共Fig. 5兲, we start the space filling optimization sequence then Eqs. 共18兲 and 共19兲 are adequate if ⌬ P is replaced by the
from the smallest finite-size scale. The smallest system 共the ‘‘el- dynamic pressure associated with the free stream, ⌬ P⬵ ␳ U 2⬁ /2.
emental system’’ in constructal terminology兲 consists of a two- We now proceed toward larger scales by recognizing that at the
dimensional volume H 0 L 0 W, in which there is only one blade of elemental level the h 0 and H 0 values are two known constants.
k p material 共Fig. 18共b兲兲. The thickness of this blade is D 0 . Heat is The next volume is the first assembly of constant frontal area
transferred from one boundary spot 共T 0 , at the root of the fin兲 to H 1 L 1 ⫽A 1 , which is shown in Fig. 19. The shape of this volume
the entire elemental volume. If we neglect the heat transfer (H 1 /L 1 ) is free to vary. The assembly is defined by a central
through the fin tip, and use the unidirectional fin conduction blade of thickness D 1 , which is connected to all the elemental
model 共关63兴兲 the elemental heat current is volumes that are needed to fill the A 1 W volume. The D 1 blade
q0
共 T 0 ⫺T ⬁ 兲 W
冋冉冊册
⫽ 共 2k p D 0 h 0 兲 1/2 tanh
2h 0
k pD 0
1/2
L0 . (17)
connects the roots of all the D 0 fins. When the number of elemen-
tal volumes in this assembly is large, the cooling effect provided
by the D 0 fins is distributed almost uniformly along the D 1 stem.
Unlike in Fig. 5, where it was possible to optimize the shape of In this limit the D 1 stem performs as a fin immersed in a convec-
the elemental volume, in the present problem the thickness of the tive medium with constant heat transfer coefficient. The effective
elemental volume (H 0 ) is fixed because it is the same as the heat transfer coefficient of this medium (h 1 ) can be deduced from
optimal spacing between two successive D 0 -thick plate fins. The Eq. 共17兲 by noting that each q 0 current flows out of the D 1 blade
spacing is optimal when the laminar boundary layers that develop through an area of size H 0 W. In other words, we combine h 1
over the swept length W became thick enough to touch at the ⫽q 0 / 关 H 0 W(T 0 ⫺T ⬁ ) 兴 with Eq. 共17兲 and L 0 ⫽H 1 /2, and obtain
These were developed by maximizing the global conductance
共21兲. Associated results are the number of elemental fins (n 1 ) and
the twice-maximized conductance.
In Fig. 20 we see the evolution of the twice-optimized geom-
etry of the first assembly, while the size parameter Ã 1 increases at
constant volume fraction of fin material (⌽ 1 ⫽1000). In other
words, the amount of fin material increases in proportion to the
volume occupied by the fin tree. The drawing was made by as-
suming that ␾ 1 ⫽0.1, or ⌽ 1 ⫽104 ␾ 1 . Each frame was drawn to
scale, to show the growth of the volume occupied by the assem-
bly. The role of unit length is played by the thickness of the
elemental volume (H 0 ), which is constant. The exhibited struc-
tures were selected to correspond to even values of n 1 . The cor-
responding values of the assembly size Ã 1 are also listed.
Two invariant features of the fin trees of Fig. 20 are worth
noting. The overall shape of the volume occupied by the assembly
does not change much as the volume size increases. Another fea-
ture is the thickness of the elemental fin, D 0,opt , which in Fig. 20
does not vary from frame to frame.
Future work may address various improvements and refine-
ments of the classical fin conduction model that was used in set-
Fig. 19 First construct consisting of a large number of el-
ting up the present analysis and optimization. For example, the
emental one-fin volumes „†64‡… effects of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, radiative
heat transfer, and spatially varying heat transfer coefficient can be
incorporated at the elemental level, while paying a penalty
through the increased complexity of the analysis, and the need for
h 1⫽
1
H0 冋冉冊册
共 2k p D 0 h 0 兲 1/2 tanh
2h 0
k pD 0
1/2
H1
2
. (20)
numerical work even at the elemental level. Equation 共18兲 will
most definitely be replaced by a numerical procedure in the re-
fined model. The performance of the second construct is described
The D 1 blade functions as a fin with insulated tip, therefore we further in 共关64兴兲, which also reports a fully numerical simulation
write cf. Eq. 共17兲 and optimization of the first-construct configuration.
冋冉冊册 1/2
Trees of fins may also be pursued in simpler configurations.
q1 2h 1 When there are only two elemental plate fins in the first construct,
⫽ 共 2k p D 1 h 1 兲 1/2 tanh L1 . (21)
共 T 1 ⫺T ⬁ 兲 W k pD 1 the assembly has the shape of a T or, when the elemental tips are
bent downward, the shape of ‘‘tau’’ 共关62,65兴兲.
Two constraints must be satisfied, the total volume, or frontal Constructal trees of fins can also be developed in cylindrical
area (A 1 ⫽H 1 L 1 ), and the frontal area of all the solid (A p,1 geometries. The first construct consists of a number of elemental
⫽D 1 L 1 ⫹n 1 D 0 L 0 ), or the volume fraction ␾ 1 ⫽A p,1 /A 1 . Alter- circular plate fins mounted on a cylindrical stem 共关66兴兲. Fluid is
natively, the constraints are represented by the dimensionless forced to flow through the spaces between adjacent fins. Again,
numbers Ã 1 ⫽A 1 /H 20 and ⌽ 1 ⫽ ␾ 1 k p /(h 0 H 0 ). there are two geometric features that can be optimized, the exter-
The geometry of the construct has two degrees-of-freedom. In nal aspect ratio of the cylindrical construct 共diameter/length兲, and
the numerical work detailed in 共关64兴兲 the two optimized features the ratio between the elemental plate-fin thickness and the stem
were the external shape H 1 /L 1 and the internal ratio D 1 /D 0 . diameter.
Trees of fins will continue to attract interest as heat transfer
augmentation techniques in heat exchangers, e.g., the cooling of
electronics. More recently, similar structures have generated inter-
est in chemical engineering 共关67兴兲 and entropy generation minimi-
zation 共关68,69兴兲, where the analyses relied on concepts of fractal
geometry.
Trees for Fluid Flow

Analogous tree-shaped paths can be deduced for fluid flow be-
tween a volume and a point, or an area and a point. For brevity,
we omit the details because they are available in the literature
共关2,59,70–72兴兲. These constructs come on an impressive back-
ground of older descriptive work that covers several decades. Of
all the tree flows studied in the past, the trees for fluid flow have
been studied the most. Their features have been described quan-
titatively in surprisingly sharp 共reproducible兲 terms, notably in the
study of lungs, vascularized tissues, botanical trees, and rivers
共关46,73–80兴兲. In recent years, these natural phenomena have been
visualized on the computer by means of repetitive fracturing al-
gorithms, which had to be postulated. The origin of the phenom-
ena was left to the ‘‘explanation’’ that the broken pieces 共or build-
ing blocks from the reverse point of view of constructal theory兲
are the fruits of a nondeterministic process of self-optimization
and self-organization.
Fig. 20 The evolution of the optimized first construct of plate The analogy with the heat-current trees described in the preced-
fins as the total volume increases „†64‡… ing sections is based on the fact that a fluid flow may exist in more
Fig. 21 Three-dimensional constructs for flow between a volume and one point: the doubling of
the outer dimension in going from the optimized third construct „a… to the optimized sixth con-
struct „b… „†2,70‡…
than one flow regime. In the heat flow example of Fig. 5 the two clical pattern for each sequence of three construct sizes, provided
regimes were high-resistance conduction through most of the ma- that i⭓2. We return to this cyclical pattern in the closing para-
terial (k 0 ), and low-resistance conduction through the inserts graph of this section.
(k p ). The analogous regimes for pure fluid flow are viscous dif- Another feature of this architecture is that the outer linear di-
fusion and, respectively, streams. In flow through heterogeneous mension of the construct of order (i⫹3) is the double of the outer
porous media the two regimes are Darcy flow and, respectively, dimension of the construct of order 共i兲. This factor of 2 increase
channel flow through fissures. also applies to the diameters of the largest 共collecting兲 ducts of the
The existence, structure, and transport capability of turbulent two constructs. Figure 21 illustrates the doubling of the size, from
flows can be reasoned from the same theoretical viewpoint. See the third construct 共a兲 to the sixth construct 共b兲.
the first eddy and growth rate of turbulent shear layers 共关1,24兴兲, The internal details do not double their sizes in going from
and the onset of Rayleigh-Bénard convection and the entire construct 共i兲 to construct (i⫹3). In other words, construct (i
Nu-Ra curve in fluids and fluid-saturated porous media 共关53兴兲. ⫹3) is not the same as magnifying by a factor of 2 every feature
What we recognize as macroscopic structure is none other than of construct 共i兲. The reason is that the fluid network constructed
the geometric arrangement of the spatial domain of one flow re- theoretically in this line of work has a definite 共finite, known兲
gime relative to 共or through兲 the territory occupied by the other. beginning: the smallest scale 共K, or D 0 兲 and the optimized first
The structure is not visible—it is not even an issue—when only construct. The geometry and finite size of this beginning distin-
one flow regime is present. In such cases the lone regime is the guish the present theoretical construction from the algorithms
one with the highest resistance. Note that the volume-to-point used in fractal geometry. In the latter, the algorithm 共from large to
flows of Figs. 5–16 could also be effected by molecular diffusion small兲 is repeated conceptually ad infinitum 共关48兴兲, all the way
alone, namely, thermal diffusion through a single material (k 0 ), or down to the scale of size zero. Because of the infinite series of
Darcy flow through a single porous medium with low permeabil- steps, the fractals-generated image of a certain size could be ob-
ity. Such flows are disorganized microscopically, and shapeless tained in principle by magnifying an image of a smaller size. That
macroscopically. They become visible, as background, only when does not happen in any of the constructs derived from principle.
a second flow regime emerges 共streams, channels兲. The latter rep- The inner cutoff, and the breakdown of the algorithm at small
resents organized motion, or flow with shape. enough scales are as important as any other geometric feature.
Figure 21 is a summary of the volume-to-point flow structure in The visible tree 共channels兲 is not more important than the invisible
three dimensions, which is obtained by optimizing each volume flow through the interstitial spaces. The interstices, cutoffs and
element according to the constructal sequence. This figure may be smallest 共finite兲 size scales are as much a part of natural structures
viewed as a three-dimensional counterpart of Figs. 9 and 10. The as the tree-connected channels. This is why the geometry of na-
volume is filled mostly with Darcy flow through a porous medium ture is not fractal.
of low permeability K. The flow is collected into streams guided In the spring of 1999, while teaching the interdisciplinary
by round tubes with Hagen-Poiseuille flow. The tube diameters course based on this material 共关1兴兲, we found that some of the
(D 0 ,D 1 , . . . ), tube lengths 共not shown in Fig. 21兲, and dimen- features of the structure of Fig. 21 can be deduced much more
sions of each volume scale 共elemental, first construct, . . . 兲 are succinctly by optimizing a plane construct consisting of a
results of the optimization principle, and are reported in 共关2,70兴兲. T-shaped junction 共Fig. 22共a兲兲. For simplicity, assume right
The elemental volume is the dark cube highlighted in Fig. 21共a兲. angles and Hagen-Poiseuille flow with constant properties. Exten-
An important feature of this theoretical structure is that the sive numerical optimization work on constructal trees for conduc-
changes in dimensions settle into a pattern, but only after the order tion heat transfer 共关43兴兲 has shown that the optimization of the
of the volume construct becomes high enough. For example, the angle of confluence plays only a minor role in the overall resis-
optimized diameter factor settles at D i⫹1 /D i ⫽2 1/3 after the sec- tance of the construct.
ond construct. The factor for tube lengths L i⫹1 /L i exhibits a cy- The stream ṁ i encounters the flow resistance of two L i⫹1 tubes
In the tree that was optimized step by step into three-
dimensional parallelpipedic constructs 共Fig. 21兲, the tube lengths
increase by factors in the cyclical sequence 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, . . . .
The average of this factor for one step is 2 1/3; therefore, the op-
timization of the plane construct of Fig. 22共a兲 is a condensed
summary of the optimized three-dimensional construct averaged
over each three-step cycle. The averaged tree is laid out
共stretched兲 in Fig. 22共b兲 so that we may see all the tubes and
levels 共i兲 of construction. The number of tubes at level i is N i
⫽2 i and the total number of levels is n. Note that unlike in Fig.
21, in Fig. 22共b兲 the index i proceeds from the largest to the
smallest tube, where L n and D n are the fixed dimensions of the
elemental tube.
Trees of Convective Heat Currents: Heat Loss Versus

Body Size
Consider next the flow of heat from the roots to the edges of the
canopies of fluid trees such as Fig. 22共b兲. This proposal is new
共关1,81兴兲. Of interest is the heat lost by an animal through the body
volume situated under its skin.
The trees of blood vessels are one geometric feature under the
skin, but not the only one. The other is the superposition of the
arterial and venous trees, so closely and regularly that tube i of
one tree is in counterflow with tube i of the other 共Fig. 22共c兲兲. The
existence of counterflows of blood and other fluids is widely rec-
ognized in physiology 共关19兴兲. It is also recognized in bioengineer-
ing where it serves as basis for a successful model of heat transfer
through living tissues 共关82,83兴兲.
The counterflow formed by two tubes of level i is shown in the
detailed drawing of Fig. 22共d兲. The arterial stream is warmer than
the venous stream: heat flows transversally, from stream to
stream. Consider now the adiabatic control surface drawn with
dashed line around the counterflow. Since the enthalpy of the
warmer stream is greater than that of the colder stream, the coun-
terflow convects longitudinally the energy current q i
⫽ṁ i c p ⌬T t,i , where c p is the blood specific heat, and ⌬T t,i is the
stream-to-stream temperature difference at level i. It was known
even earlier in cryogenic engineering 共关7,84兴兲 that such a counter-
flow sustains a longitudinal temperature gradient, ⌬T i /L i , and
Fig. 22 The construction of the tree of convective heat cur- that the convective energy current is proportional to this gradient:
rents: „a… the constrained optimization of the geometry of a
T-shaped construct; „b… the stretched tree of optimized con- 共 ṁ i c p 兲 2 ⌬T i
structs; „c… the superposition of two identical trees oriented in q i⫽ . (24)
hipi Li
counterflow; and „d… the convective heat flow along a pair of
tubes in counterflow „†81‡… In this expression h i and p i are the overall stream-to-stream heat
transfer coefficient and the perimeter of contact between the two
streams. In the case of blood counterflow, the stream-to-stream
in parallel, which are connected in series with one L i tube. When thermal resistance h ⫺1i is the sum of two resistances: the resis-
the resistance is minimized by fixing the total tube volume we find tance through the fluid in the duct 共⬃D i /k f , where k f is the fluid
the optimal diameter ratio D i⫹1 /D i ⫽2 ⫺1/3, just as in the optimi- thermal conductivity兲, plus the resistance through the solid tissue
zation of the construction of Fig. 21. This old result is known as that separates two tubes 共⬃t i /k, where k is the tissue thermal
Murray’s law 共关47兴兲. It is an extremely robust result, because it is conductivity兲. Even when the tubes touch, t i is of the same order
independent of the lengths (L i ,L i⫹1 ) and the relative position of as D i . In addition, since k f ⬃k, we conclude that h i ⬃k/D i , and
the three tubes. Eq. 共24兲 becomes
New is the optimization of the lengths when the space allocated q iL ik
to the construct is fixed. Now geometry and relative positions are ⌬T i ⬃ . (25)
taken into account. In the configuration of Fig. 22共a兲 the space ṁ 2i c 2p
constraint is The double tree structure of fluid streams is a single tree of
2L i⫹1 L i ⫽constant. (22) convective heat streams with zero net mass flow. The convective
tree stretches from the core temperature of the animal 共at i⫽0兲 to
This second minimization of the flow resistance yields the optimal the skin temperature. The latter is registered in many of the el-
length ratio emental volumes (i⫽n) that happen to be near the skin. The
many counterflows of the double tree sustain the overall tempera-
L i⫹1
⫽ f ⫽2 ⫺1/3 (23) ture difference ⌬T 共constant兲,
Li n n
q 0k
which happens to match the optimal ratio of diameters. The opti-
mized diameter and length ratios are drawn to scale in Fig. 22共a兲.
⌬T⫽ 兺
i⫽0
⌬T i ⬃
ṁ 20 c 2p 兺 NL .
i⫽0
i i (26)
In going from Eq. 共25兲 to Eq. 共26兲, we used the continuity rela- relation between t opt and body size 共mass M, or volume V兲 we
tions for fluid flow 共N i ṁ i ⫽ṁ 0 , constant兲 and heat flow 共N i q i need to substitute into Eq. 共30兲 two additional relations:
⫽q 0 , constant兲. Recalling Eq. 共23兲, we substitute L i ⫽L 0 f i , L n 共i兲 the relation between metabolic rate (ṁ) and body size
⫽L 0 f n and N i ⫽2 i into Eq. 共26兲, and after rearranging we obtain (M ), and
q 0⬃ 冉冊
q0
ṁ 0
2
kL n f ⫺n 关共 2 f 兲 n⫹1 ⫺1 兴
c 2p ⌬T 共 2 f ⫺1 兲
. (27)
共ii兲 the relation between the mass-transfer contact area 共A兲 and
body size.
Separated on the right-hand side are the quantities that are con- Relation 共i兲 is ṁ⬃M 3/4, cf. Eq. 共29兲. For relation 共ii兲 we have
stant, and the quantities that depend on n 共the number of construc- the geometric argument outlined in 共关2兴兲, pp. 786–787. The thick-
tion steps兲. Note that the ratio q 0 /ṁ 0 is independent of body size ness of the tissue penetrated by mass diffusion during the time t opt
共n兲 because both q 0 and ṁ 0 are proportional to the metabolic rate. opt . The body volume 共or mass兲 of the tissue
is proportional to t 1/2
The volume scale is estimated by regarding the stretched tree as penetrated by mass diffusion during this time obeys the propor-
a cone in Fig. 22共b兲. The base of the cone 共at i⫽n兲 has an area of opt . Eliminating t opt between M ⬃At opt and t opt
tionality M ⬃At 1/2 1/2
size N n L 2n ⬃2 n L 2n . The height of the cone is of the same order as ⬃(A/ṁ) 共see Eq. 共30兲兲, and using ṁ⬃M , we conclude that
2 3/4
the sum of all the tube lengths, L 0 ⫹L 1 ⫹ . . . ⫹L n ⫽L 0 (1 the contact area should be almost proportional to the body mass,
⫺ f n⫹1 )/(1⫺ f ). In conclusion, the volume scale is A⬃M 7/8. Finally, by substituting ṁ⬃M 3/4 and A⬃M 7/8 into t opt
冉冊 n
⬃(A/ṁ) 2 , we conclude that the time intervals must vary as
2 1⫺ f n⫹1
V⬃L 3n . (28) t opt⬃M 1/4. (31)
f 1⫺ f
This allometric law is supported convincingly by a very large
The relation between metabolic rate and total volume is ob-
volume of observations accumulated in the physiology literature
tained by eliminating n between Eqs. 共27兲 and 共28兲. The result is
共关19–22兴兲.
visible in closed form if we assume that n is sufficiently large so
that (2 f ) n⫹1 Ⰷ1 in Eq. 共27兲 and f n⫹1 Ⰶ1 in Eq. 共28兲. In this limit
q 0 is proportional to 2 n , and V is proportional to (2/f ) n . From Optimal Geometric Form: A Prevalent Natural Phe-
this follows the nakedly simple result nomenon
log q 0 3 The flow of this lecture has been from engineering to nature.
⫽ (29) Along the way we reviewed a theory of how geometric form is
log V 4
generated in nature. Now the theory returns the favor to engineer-
which means that q 0 must be proportional to V 3/4. The proportion- ing: The same principle can be used to perfect the structure of
ality between metabolic rate and body size raised to the power 3/4 engineering systems and to develop concepts for entirely new
has just been predicted, from pure theory. It can be verified nu- systems.
merically that Eq. 共29兲 is accurate even for small n. The progress of tree designs toward the constant-resistance
The 3/4 exponent that has been so puzzling over the years is a limit 共Fig. 15兲 exemplifies the work that can be done in engineer-
reflection of the optimized ratio of successive tube lengths, in a ing. Better global performance is achieved when more of the in-
fixed space, L i⫹1 /L i ⫽ f ⫽2 ⫺1/3. Specifically, if we use f ⫽2 ⫺a in ternal points are forced to work as hard as the few hardest work-
the derivation of Eq. 共29兲, instead of 3/4 we obtain (1⫹a) ⫺1 , ing points. The system is destined to remain imperfect. The
where a⫽1/3. The 3/4 exponent is intimately tied to the optimi- resistances to the internal flows cannot be eliminated because of
zation that generated the tube lengths ratio subject to the total the reality of design: Amounts and types of materials are given,
volume constraint, after the ratio of tube diameters had been op- volumes and matching 共neighboring兲 systems are specified, and
timized subject to the tube volume constraint. This double geo- the time to contemplate changes is limited. In spite of these con-
metric optimization, the two constrains, and the pairing of tubes straints, we can spread the imperfection around in optimal or
into constructs larger than the fixed elemental volume, is the es- nearly optimal ways. The highs and the lows must be balanced.
sence of the constructal method 共关1,2兴兲. The optimal spreading of slopes and differences takes us to the
In conclusion, what had been missing was the combination of architecture that serves the global purpose. Geometric structure
共i兲 the tree architecture optimized for minimum pumping power, springs out of principle.
and 共ii兲 the convective heat transfer 共or, better, thermal insulation兲 In the engineering of flow systems, the search for geometric
characteristics of two identical fluid trees superimposed in coun- configurations that offer better global performance subject to
terflow. Putting 共i兲 and 共ii兲 together into a body heat-loss theory of present-day constraints is known as thermodynamic optimization,
animal design is the contribution of constructal theory. irreversibility minimization, or entropy generation minimization.
In this lecture I focused on the mechanism through which optimi-
Breathing and Heartbeating Times Versus Body Size zation is accomplished: the deterministic relationship between the
improvement of performance 共objective, constraints兲 and the gen-
The proportionality between heat loss and body size raised to
eration of flow geometry 共shape and structure兲 in the system. Most
the power 3/4 is just one of the many allometric laws that can be
of this work was done first in heat transfer.
predicted based on geometric optimization subject to constraints
Performance improvement, or optimization is an old idea and a
共关1兴兲. Another famous example is the proportionality between
much older natural phenomenon. It has been with us throughout
breathing 共or heartbeating兲 time and body size raised to the power
the history of engineering. Its reach, however, is much broader
1/4.
and more permanent: Everything exhibits it. We can be sure that
It was shown in Bejan 关2,85兴 that when the pumping power is
the performance of power plants—our own performance, really—
minimized subject to a specified 共global兲 mass transfer rate con-
will continue to improve in time, in the same way that, in time,
straint, optimal breathing and heartbeating times exist, and are
rainfall will always generate a more effective dendritic flow
proportional to (A/ṁ) 2 , structure.
t opt⬃ 冉 A 1/2
ṁ
D ⌬C 冊 2
(30)
If this phenomenon is so old and prevalent, then what is new?
New is the streamlining of its study into a single principle, a new
principle distinct from the second law. Most of this work could
where A, ṁ, D, and ⌬C are, in order, the total internal surface of have been done one or two centuries ago, before thermodynamics.
all the tubes, the total mass flow rate of the tree, the mass diffu- The geometric minimization of resistances to heat and fluid flow
sivity, and the driving concentration difference. To predict the could have been accomplished based on Fourier’s heat transmis-
sion and the hydraulics of Bernoulli, Poiseuille, and Darcy. It is a max ⫽ maximum
mystery that this was not done then, because that period was still min ⫽ minimum
influenced by Maupertuis’, Leibnitz’ and Castigliano’s intuition opt ⫽ optimum
that of all possible processes the only ones that actually occur are Superscripts
those that involve minimum expenditure of ‘‘action.’’ Instead, as
Hildebrandt and Tromba 关86兴 have noted, modern physics em- (ˆ), (˜)⫽ dimensionless variables
barked on a course tailored to the principle of infinitesimal local
effects. The constructal principle is a jolt the other way, a means
to rationalize macroscopic features, objective, and behavior.
References
关1兴 Bejan, A., 2000, Shape and Structure, From Engineering to Nature, Cam-
Acknowledgment bridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
关2兴 Bejan, A., 1997, Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics, Second Ed., John
This research was supported by a grant from the National Sci- Wiley and Sons, New York.
ence Foundation. 关3兴 Bejan, A., 1988, ‘‘Theory of Heat Transfer-Irreversible Power Plants,’’ Int. J.
Heat Mass Transf., 31, pp. 1211–1219.
Nomenclature 关4兴 Bejan, A., 1989, ‘‘Theory of Heat Transfer-Irreversible Refrigeration Plants,’’
Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 32, pp. 1631–1639.
A ⫽ area, m2 关5兴 Bejan, A., Tsatsaronis, G., and Moran, M., 1996, Thermal Design and Opti-
cp ⫽ specific heat at constant pressure, J/kg•K mization, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
关6兴 Moran, M. J., 1982, Availability Analysis: A Guide to Efficient Energy Use,
C ⫽ thermal conductance, W/K Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
D ⫽ thickness, diameter, m 关7兴 Bejan, A., 1982, Entropy Generation Through Heat and Fluid Flow, John
D ⫽ mass diffusivity, m2/s Wiley and Sons, New York.
f ⫽ ratio of successive tube length sizes 关8兴 Bejan, A., 1988, Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics, John Wiley and
Sons, New York.
H ⫽ height, transversal dimension, m 关9兴 Bejan, A., 1996, Entropy Generation Minimization, CRC Press, Boca Raton,
i ⫽ level of assembly FL.
K ⫽ permeability, m2 关10兴 Bejan, A., 1996, ‘‘Entropy Generation Minimization: The New Thermody-
k ⫽ thermal conductivity, W/m•K namics of Finite-Size Devices and Finite-Time Processes,’’ J. Appl. Phys., 79,
pp. 1191–1218.
kf ⫽ fluid thermal conductivity, W/m•K 关11兴 Feidt, M., 1987, Thermodynamique et Optimisation Énergetique des Systèmes
kp ⫽ high thermal conductivity, W/m•K et Procedés, Technique et Documentation, Lavoisier, Paris.
k0 ⫽ low thermal conductivity, W/m•K 关12兴 Sieniutycz, S., and Salamon, P., eds., 1990, Finite-Time Thermodynamics and
k1 ⫽ effective thermal conductivity, W/m•K Thermoeconomics, Taylor and Francis, New York.
关13兴 De Vos, A., 1992, Endoreversible Thermodynamics of Solar Energy Conver-
k̃ ⫽ ratio of conductivities, k p /k 0 sion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
L ⫽ length, m 关14兴 Radcenco, V., 1994, Generalized Thermodynamics, Editura Tehnica, Buchar-
ṁ ⫽ mass flow rate, kg/s est.
M ⫽ mass, kg 关15兴 Bejan, A., and Mamut, E., eds., 1999, Thermodynamic Optimization of Com-
plex Energy Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Nether-
n ⫽ number of constituents in a construct; number of lev- lands.
els of assembly 关16兴 Bejan, A., Vadász, P., and Kröger, D. G., 1999, Energy and the Environment,
N ⫽ number of tubes Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
p ⫽ perimeter of contact, m 关17兴 Schmidt-Nielsen, K., 1964, Desert Animals: Physiological Problems of Heat
and Water, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
q, Q ⫽ heat transfer rate, W 关18兴 Schmidt-Nielsen, K., 1972, How Animals Work, Cambridge University Press,
q⵮ ⫽ heat generation rate, W/m3 Cambridge, UK.
Ra ⫽ Rayleigh number 关19兴 Schmidt-Nielsen, K., 1984, Scaling: Why Is Animal Size So Important?, Cam-
bridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
S ⫽ spacing, m 关20兴 Peters, R. H., 1983, The Ecological Implications of Body Size, Cambridge
S gen ⫽ entropy generation rate, W/K University Press, Cambridge, UK.
t ⫽ time, s 关21兴 Calder, W. A., III, 1984, Size, Function, and Life History, Harvard University
tc ⫽ cooldown time, s Press, Cambridge, MA.
关22兴 Vogel, S., 1988, Life’s Devices, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
T ⫽ temperature, K 关23兴 Kraus, A. D., and Bar-Cohen, A., 1995, Design and Analysis of Heat Sinks,
V ⫽ volume, m3 John Wiley and Sons, New York.
W ⫽ power, W 关24兴 Bejan, A., 1995, Convection Heat Transfer, 2nd Ed., John Wiley and Sons,
W ⫽ width, m New York.
关25兴 Kim, S. J., and Lee, S. W., eds., 1996, Air Cooling Technology for Electronic
x ⫽ conductance allocation fraction Equipment, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
x, y ⫽ cartesian coordinates, m 关26兴 Sathe, S., and Sammakia, B., 1998, ‘‘A Review of Recent Developments in
␣ ⫽ angle, rad Some Practical Aspects of Air-Cooled Electronic Packages,’’ ASME J. Heat
␣ ⫽ thermal diffusivity, m2/s Transfer, 120, pp. 830–839.
关27兴 Bejan, A., 1984, Convection Heat Transfer, John Wiley and Sons, New York,
␤ ⫽ coefficient of thermal expansion, K⫺1 Chapter 4, Problem 11, p. 157.
⌬C ⫽ concentration difference, kg/m3 关28兴 Bar-Cohen, A., and Rohsenow, W. M., 1984, ‘‘Thermally Optimum Spacing
⌬P ⫽ pressure difference, N/m2 of Vertical, Natural Convection Cooled, Parallel Plates,’’ ASME J. Heat
⌬T ⫽ peak excess temperature, K Transfer, 106, pp. 116–123.
关29兴 Anand, N. K., Kim, S. H., and Fletcher, L. S., 1992, ‘‘The Effect of Plate
Greek Symbols Spacing on Free Convection between Heated Parallel Plates,’’ ASME J. Heat
Transfer, 114, pp. 515–518.
␧ ⫽ small number, Eq. 共14兲关30兴 Bejan, A., Fowler, A. J., and Stanescu, G., 1995, ‘‘The Optimal Spacing Be-
␮ ⫽ viscosity, kg/s•m tween Horizontal Cylinders in a Fixed Volume Cooled by Natural Convec-
␯ ⫽ kinematic viscosity, m2/s tion,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 38, pp. 2047–2055.
关31兴 Fisher, T. S., and Torrance, K. E., 1998, ‘‘Free Convection Limits for Pin-Fin
⌸ ⫽ pressure drop number Cooling,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 120, pp. 633–640.
␾, ⌽ ⫽ parameters indicating the relative amount of high- 关32兴 Ledezma, G. A., and Bejan, A., 1997, ‘‘Optimal Geometric Arrangement of
conductivity 共or fin兲 material Staggered Vertical Plates in Natural Convection,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer,
119, pp. 700–708.
Subscripts 关33兴 Bejan, A., and Sciubba, E., 1992, ‘‘The Optimal Spacing for Parallel Plates
Cooled by Forced Convection,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 35, pp. 3259–3264.
C ⫽ reversible, Carnot 关34兴 Petrescu, S., 1994, ‘‘Comments on the Optimal Spacing of Parallel Plates
H ⫽ high Cooled by Forced Convection,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 37, pp. 1283.
L ⫽ low 关35兴 Fowler, A. J., Ledezma, G. A., and Bejan, A., 1997, ‘‘Optimal Geometric
Arrangement of Staggered Plates in Forced Convection,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Volumetric Cooling,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 43, pp. 3105–3118.
Transf., 40, pp. 1795–1805. 关61兴 Hamburgen, W. R., 1986, ‘‘Optimal Finned Heat Sinks,’’ WRL Research Re-
关36兴 Bejan, A., 1995, ‘‘The Optimal Spacings for Cylinders in Crossflow Forced port 86/4, Digital, Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA.
Convection,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp. 767–770. 关62兴 Kraus, A. D., 1999, ‘‘Developments in the Analysis of Finned Arrays,’’ Int. J.
关37兴 Stanescu, G., Fowler, A. J., and Bejan, A., 1996, ‘‘The Optimal Spacing of Transp. Phenom., 1, pp. 141–164.
Cylinders in Free-Stream Cross-Flow Forced Convection,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass 关63兴 Gardner, K. A., 1945, ‘‘Efficiency of Extended Surfaces,’’ Trans. ASME, 67,
Transf., 39, pp. 311–317. pp. 621–631.
关38兴 Ledezma, G. A., Morega, A. M., and Bejan, A., 1996, ‘‘Optimal Spacing 关64兴 Bejan, A., and Dan, N., 1999, ‘‘Constructal Trees of Convective Fins,’’ ASME
Between Fins With Impinging Flow,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 118, pp. 570– J. Heat Transfer, 121, 675–682.
577. 关65兴 Bejan, A., and Almogbel, M., 2000, ‘‘Constructal T-Shaped Fins,’’ Int. J. Heat
关39兴 Heinrich, B., 1981, ‘‘The Mechanism and Energetics of Honeybee Swarm Mass Transf., 43, pp. 2101–2115.
Temperature Regulation,’’ J. Exp. Biol., 91, pp. 25–55. 关66兴 Alebrahim, A., and Bejan, A., 1999, ‘‘Constructal Trees of Circular Fins for
关40兴 Basak, T., Rao, K. K., and Bejan, A., 1996, ‘‘A Model for Heat Transfer in a Conductive and Convective Heat Transfer,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 42, pp.
Honey Bee Swarm,’’ Chem. Eng. Sci., 51, pp. 387–400. 3585–3597.
关41兴 Bejan, A., Ikegami, Y., and Ledezma, G. A., 1998, ‘‘Constructal Theory of 关67兴 Lin, W. W., and Lee, D. J., 1997, ‘‘Diffusion-Convection Process in a Branch-
Natural Crack Pattern Formation for Fastest Cooling,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass ing Fin,’’ Chem. Eng. Commun., 158, pp. 59–70.
Transf., 41, pp. 1945–1954. 关68兴 Lee, D. J., and Lin, W. W., 1995, ‘‘Second-Law Analysis on a Fractal-Like
关42兴 Bejan, A., 1997, ‘‘Constructal-Theory Network of Conducting Paths for Cool- Fin Under Crossflow,’’ AIChE J., 41, pp. 2314–2317.
ing a Heat Generating Volume,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 799–816. 关69兴 Lin, W. W., and Lee, D. J., 1997, ‘‘Second-Law Analysis on a Pin-Fin Array
关43兴 Ledezma, G., Bejan, A., and Errera, M. R., 1997, ‘‘Constructal Tree Networks Under Cross-Flow,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 1937–1945.
for Heat Transfer,’’ J. Appl. Phys., 82, pp. 89–100. 关70兴 Bejan, A., 1997, ‘‘Constructal Tree Network for Fluid Flow Between a Finite-
关44兴 Rodriguez-Iturbe, I., and Rinaldo, A., 1997, Fractal River Basins, Cambridge Size Volume and One Source or Sink,’’ Rev. Gen. Therm., 36, pp. 592–604.
University Press, Cambridge, UK. 关71兴 Bejan, A., and Errera, M. R., 1997, ‘‘Deterministic Tree Networks for Fluid
关45兴 Meakin, P., 1998, Fractals, Scaling and Growth Far From Equilibrium, Cam- Flow: Geometry for Minimal Flow Resistance between a Volume and One
bridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Point,’’ Fractals, 5, pp. 685–695.
关46兴 Cohn, D. L., 1954, ‘‘Optimal Systems: I. The Vascular System,’’ Bull. Math. 关72兴 Errera, M. R., and Bejan, A., 1999, ‘‘Tree Networks for Flows in Porous
Biophys., 16, pp. 59–74. Media,’’ J. Porous Media, 2, pp. 1–18.
关47兴 Thompson, D’A., 1942, On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press, 关73兴 Weibel, E. R., 1963, Morphometry of the Human Lung, Academic Press, New
Cambridge, UK. York.
关48兴 Mandelbrot, B. B., 1982, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Freeman, New 关74兴 Nonnenmacher, T. F., Losa, G. A., and Weibel, E. R., eds., 1994, Fractals in
York. Biology and Medicine, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Switzerland.
关49兴 Almogbel, M., and Bejan, A., 1999, ‘‘Conduction Trees With Spacings at the 关75兴 MacDonald, N., 1983, Trees and Networks in Biological Models, Wiley,
Tips,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 42, pp. 3739–3756. Chichester, UK.
关50兴 Dan, N., and Bejan, A., 1998, ‘‘Constructal Tree Networks for the Time- 关76兴 Bloom, A. L., 1978, Geomorphology, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Dependent Discharge of a Finite-Size Volume to One Point,’’ J. Appl. Phys., 关77兴 Leopold, L. B., Wolman, M. G., and Miller, J. P., 1964, Fluvial Processes in
84, pp. 3042–3050. Geomorphology, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, CA.
关51兴 Neagu, M., and Bejan, A., 1999, ‘‘Constructal-Theory Tree Networks of ‘Con- 关78兴 Scheiddeger, A. E., 1970, Theoretical Geomorphology, 2nd Ed., Springer-
stant’ Thermal Resistance,’’ J. Appl. Phys., 86, pp. 1136–1144. Verlag, Berlin.
关52兴 Neagu, M., and Bejan, A., 1999, ‘‘Three-Dimensional Tree Constructs of 关79兴 Chorley, R. J., Schumm, S. A., and Sugden, D. E., 1984, Geomorphology,
‘Constant’ Thermal Resistance,’’ J. Appl. Phys., 86, pp. 7107–7115. Methuen, London.
关53兴 Nelson, R. A., and Bejan, A., 1998, ‘‘Constructal Optimization of Internal 关80兴 Morisawa, M., 1985, Rivers: Form and Process, Longman, London.
Flow Geometry in Convection,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 120, pp. 357–364. 关81兴 Bejan, A., 2000, ‘‘The Tree of Convective Heat Streams: Its Thermal Insula-
关54兴 Malkus, W. V. R., 1954, ‘‘The Heat Transport and Spectrum of Thermal tion Function and the Predicted 3/4-Power Relation between Body Heat Loss
Turbulence,’’ Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 225, pp. 196–212. and Body Size,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 43, to appear.
关55兴 Glansdorff, P., and Prigogine, L., 1971, Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, 关82兴 Weinbaum, S., and Jiji, L. M., 1985, ‘‘A New Simplified Bioheat Equation for
Stability and Fluctuations, John Wiley and Sons, London. the Effect of Blood Flow on Local Average Tissue Temperature,’’ ASME J.
关56兴 Avnir, D., Biham, O., Lidar, D., and Malcai, O., 1998, ‘‘Is the Geometry of Biomech. Eng., 107, pp. 131–139.
Nature Fractal?,’’ Science, 279, pp. 39–40. 关83兴 Huang, H. W., Chen, Z. P., and Roemer, R. B., 1996, ‘‘A Counter Current
关57兴 Bejan, A., and Tondeur, D., 1998, ‘‘Equipartition, Optimal Allocation, and the Vascular Network Model of Heat Transfer in Tissues,’’ ASME J. Biomech.
Constructal Approach to Predicting Organization in Nature,’’ Rev. Gen. Eng., 118, 120–129.
Therm., 37, pp. 165–180. 关84兴 Bejan, A., 1979, ‘‘A General Variational Principle for Thermal Insulation
关58兴 Nottale, L., 1993, Fractal Space-Time and Microphysics, World Scientific, System Design,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 22, pp. 219–228.
Singapore. 关85兴 Bejan, A., 1997, ‘‘Theory of Organization in Nature: Pulsating Physiological
关59兴 Errera, M. R., and Bejan, A., 1998, ‘‘Deterministic Tree Networks for River Processes,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 2097–2104.
Drainage Basins,’’ Fractals, 6, pp. 245–261. 关86兴 Hildebrandt, S., and Tromba, A., 1985, Mathematics and Optimal Form, Sci-
关60兴 Bejan, A., and Errera, M. R., 2000, ‘‘Convective Trees of Fluid Channels for entific American Books, New York.
Inverse Determination of
Temperature-Dependent Thermal
T. J. Martin
Mem. ASME,
Systems Engineer,
Conductivity Using Steady
Turbine System & Optimization,
M/S 201-20, Surface Data on Arbitrary Objects
Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company,
400 Main Street, An inverse computational method has been developed for the nonintrusive and nonde-
East Hartford, CT 06108 structive evaluation of the temperature-dependence of thermal conductivity. The method-
e-mail: martinj@pweh.com ology is based on an inverse computational procedure that can be used in conjunction
with an experiment. Given steady-state heat flux measurements or convection heat trans-
G. S. Dulikravich fer coefficients on the surface of the specimen, in addition to a finite number of steady-
Fellow ASME, state surface temperature measurements, the algorithm can predict the variation of ther-
Professor, mal conductivity over the entire range of measured temperatures. Thus, this method
Department of Mechanical and requires only one temperature probe and one heat flux probe. The thermal conductivity
Aerospace Engineering, dependence on temperature (k-T curve) can be completely arbitrary, although a priori
Box 19018, knowledge of the general form of the k-T curve substantially improves the accuracy of the
The University of Texas at Arlington, algorithm. The influence of errors of measured surface temperatures and heat fluxes on
Arlington, TX 76019 the predicted thermal conductivity has been evaluated. It was found that measurement
e-mail: dulikra@mae.uta.edu errors of temperature up to five percent standard deviation were not magnified by this
inverse procedure, while the effect of errors in measured heat fluxes were even lower. The
method is applicable to two-dimensional and three-dimensional solids of arbitrary shape
and size. 关S0022-1481共00兲01703-5兴
Keywords: Conduction, Heat Transfer, Inverse, Nonintrusive Diagnostics, Properties
1 Introduction verse parameter identification problems 共关2–5兴兲. They are often

classified as inverse heat conduction problems. Orlande and
The ASTM standard for the measurement of heat flux and ther-
Ozisik 关6兴 have noted that most work on parameter identification
mal properties 共关1兴兲 mandates the use of a guarded-hot-plate ap-
problems has involved the use of finite dimensional minimization
paratus. This apparatus limits the size and shape of the test speci-
techniques. That is, a finite number of interior temperature mea-
men to a flat rectangular slab or a rod having circular cross
surements are taken and the k(T) curve is iteratively modified
section. Therefore, it cannot be considered to be a nondestructive
until the difference between the measured and computed tempera-
experimental procedure. The test method may be operated only
tures is minimized in a least-squares fashion. This means that such
with one-dimensional heat flow and the specimen conductance is
numerical procedures require intrusive instrumentation.
limited to less than 16 W m⫺2 K. Errors in the measurements may
Algorithms involving an adjoint form of the heat conduction
be caused by deviations from the idealized assembly configura-
equation have also been used to obtain fairly accurate predictions
tion, heat radiation, temperature gradients in the test specimen,
of thermal conductivities using temperature histories at a single
specimen thickness, material inhomogeneity, and material phase
measurement point 共关7兴兲. The approach of using unsteady tem-
change. Compliance with this experimental testing method re-
perature measurements means that there is no need for fairly ex-
quires the establishment of a steady-state condition.
pensive heat flux probes. On the other hand, the typical inverse
These limitations exclude the measurement of thermal conduc-
methods for determination of k(T) via utilization of the unsteady
tivity, k, under a variety of circumstances. For example, it may be
temperature measurements have not been demonstrated to work
impractical or even impossible to extract a properly sized and
on arbitrarily shaped multidimensional objects 共关8–11兴兲 and for
shaped laboratory test specimen out of the given object. In cryo-
arbitrary k(T) distributions 共关11兴兲.
genic materials, it is quite difficult to measure the variation of
In this work, we are presenting an inverse numerical procedure
thermal conductivity particularly because the thermal conductivity
that differs substantially from the iterative approaches and from
versus temperature, k(T), curve is very steep or has inflections in
the formulations based on the unsteady temperature measure-
the range of low temperatures. Similarly, thermal conductivity and
ments. We start by assuming that measured values of steady heat
specific heat are extremely difficult to measure directly within the
fluxes 共or convection heat transfer coefficients兲 are available ev-
thin mushy region of a solidifying or melting medium.
erywhere on the surface of an arbitrarily shaped solid. Kirchhoff’s
It is therefore very desirable to develop a nondestructive evalu-
transformation 共关12兴兲 is then used to convert the governing heat
ation 共NDE兲 technique that can provide information about the
conduction equation into a linear boundary value problem that can
temperature-dependence of thermal conductivity. Thermal tomog-
be solved for the unknown Kirchhoff’s heat functions on the
raphy and inverse thermal design techniques using the boundary
boundary using the boundary element method. Given several
element method offer attractive possibilities for these types of
boundary temperature measurements, these heat functions are then
problems. Iterative solution procedures with finite differencing or
inverted using numerical differentiation 共关13兴兲 to obtain thermal
finite element methods are the most often used when solving in-
conductivity at the points where the overspecified temperature
measurements were taken.
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, April 12,
The experimental part of this inverse method requires one ther-
1999; revision received, February 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: A. mocouple and one heat flux probe placed sequentially only on the
Majumdar. surface of an arbitrarily shaped and sized specimen. Thus, this
method is nonintrusive and directly applicable to field testing To summarize, in the case of Robin boundary conditions, an
since special test specimens do not need to be manufactured. This initial guess to the boundary values of temperature, T, leads to an
method could still use steady temperature measurements at iso- initial thermal conductivity function, k(T). Given this informa-
lated interior points if additional accuracy is desired 共关14兴兲. tion, the Jacobian of the transformed nonlinear heat flux boundary
Our inverse method addresses many of the limitations of the condition, ⳵ Q/ ⳵ u, allows for the solution of the field of Kirchhoff
guarded-hot-plate experimental test method and offers the ability functions, u(T).
to overcome most of them. The method is inherently multidimen- The inverse procedure uses knowledge of the discrete boundary
sional and allows for multidirectional temperature gradients in the heat function values, u i , at the same physical locations where the
test specimen. The computer algorithm for the steady-state inverse boundary temperature, T i , were measured, in order to yield the
determination of the temperature variation of thermal conductivity unknown thermal conductivity curve, k(T). In the case of Robin
is noniterative 共when steady-state boundary heat fluxes and tem- boundary conditions, this new k(T) curve will produce a heat flux
peratures are provided兲 and robust, requiring only several seconds Jacobian that is, in general, different from the initial guess. There-
on a personal computer. fore, in the case of Robin boundary conditions the aforementioned
It should be pointed out that this paper offers a method which is procedure must be solved iteratively until the heat flux, Q(T),
significantly more versatile than our original method 共关15兴兲. The converges to a user-specified tolerance. In most instances, the sys-
present method does not require that experimentally measured tem of equations is only weakly nonlinear, and the initial thermal
surface temperatures must be in equal temperature intervals. The conductivity can be a guessed constant. The use of such an itera-
present method also allows that heat transfer coefficients can be tive procedure allows for the temperature-dependence of the con-
used instead of heat flux boundary conditions. The new algorithm vective heat transfer coefficient, h(T), as well as for any arbitrary
also accepts experimentally measured temperatures having same temperature-dependent heat flux boundary condition, such as heat
value, but measured at different boundary points. radiation. The numerical implementation of this nonlinear meth-
odology for well-posed problems does not produce any serious
difficulties 共关16兴兲. The implementation of this procedure for the
2 Numerical Formulation inverse determination of thermal conductivity has yet to be fully
The governing equation for steady-state heat conduction in an investigated.
isotropic medium with temperature-dependent thermal conductiv-
ity is an elliptic quasi-linear partial differential equation, 2.1 Solution to the Direct Problem Using the Boundary
Element Method. The boundary element method 共关17兴兲 is a
ⵜ• 关 k 共 T 兲 ⵜT 兴 ⫽0 (1)
powerful computational tool for solving linear and quasi-linear
This equation can be linearized by the application of Kirch- boundary value problems. Its effectiveness in solving inverse
hoff’s transformation where the temperature variable, T, can be problems, such as ill-posed boundary conditions, unknown heat
transformed uniquely to the heat function, u(T), sources, or when temperature measurements are enforced at iso-
冕
lated interior points, has been demonstrated 共关18,14兴兲.
T k共 T 兲 In this work, the boundary element method system for steady-
u⫽ dT
0 k0 state nonlinear heat conduction was written as a system of bound-
ary integral equations 共关19兴兲, valid for arbitrary two and three-
k共 T 兲 dimensional geometries. A well-posed 共direct or analysis兲
ⵜu⫽ ⵜT. (2) problem was created when Neumann 共or Robin兲 conditions were
k0
provided on all boundaries except for a single boundary point
Kirchhoff’s transform converts the governing steady-state heat where Dirichlet condition was specified. Integral of all heat fluxes
conduction equation into Laplace’s equation, ⵜ 2 u⫽0. Dirichlet over the entire boundary had to amount to zero. The boundary of
boundary conditions can also be transformed by applying Kirch- the test specimen was discretized with N BE elements connected at
hoff’s transformation directly to the boundary temperatures. Neu- their end points with N BN boundary nodes. The variation of u and
mann boundary conditions can easily be related to the heat flux, ⳵ u/ ⳵ n over each boundary element 共line segment兲 was assumed to
Q, in the direction, n, normal to the boundary. be linear. The integration over each boundary element was accom-
⳵T ⳵u plished using Gaussian quadrature. In the case where a singularity
Q⫽⫺k ⫽k 0 (3) existed at one of the end points of a boundary element, analytic
⳵n ⳵n integration was performed. This discretization procedure allowed
The specification of convective heat transfer coefficients on the the nodal quantities of u and ⳵ u/ ⳵ n to be factored into matrix
boundaries falls into the category of a Robin-type boundary con- form, 关 H兴兵 U其 ⫽ 关 G兴兵 Q其 . Thus, the 关H兴 and 关G兴 matrices are
dition. It is a special case of the more general nonlinear heat flux known because they are strictly dependent upon the Green’s func-
boundary condition, where the heat flux is a function of tempera- tion and the geometry.
ture.
⳵T 3 Inverse Method for Determining k„T… Variation
Q 共 T 兲 ⫽⫺k ⫽h 共 T⫺T ⬁ 兲 (4)
⳵n When heat fluxes are known over the entire boundary via
steady-state measurements taken on the entire surface of the ob-
Here, the boundary temperature is a function of the Kirchhoff ject, the boundary element method can be used to solve for the
function, T⫽T(u). This condition does not pose any difficulties transform of the Kirchhoff heat functions on the boundary.
whenever the temperature is overspecified over the entire convec-
tive boundary. But, in general, an iterative solution procedure, 关 H兴兵 U其 ⫽ 关 G兴兵 Q其 ⫽ 兵 F其 (6)
such as the Newton-Raphson method, will be required. The Robin The matrix 关G兴 can be multiplied by the vector 兵Q其 to form a
condition can be made linear by the use of the Jacobian, ⳵ Q/ ⳵ u, vector of known quantities 兵F其 so that the matrix 关H兴 can be
of the Kirchhoff transformation. inverted to obtain the values of 兵U其 at each boundary node. The
冉冊冉冊
⳵u
⳵n
n
⫽
⳵u
⳵n
n⫺1
⫹
1 ⳵Q
k0 ⳵u冉冊 n⫺1
共 u n ⫺u n⫺1 兲 (5)
matrix 关H兴 appears to be well conditioned so that regularization
methods are not required. A caution should be exercised since the
level of ill-conditioning exhibited by the matrix 关H兴 could be re-
Since the thermal conductivity variation is unknown, the iteration duced artificially due to coarse discretization. Since the inversion
must also include the inverse procedure, which will be explained is nonunique when only Neumann-type 共heat flux兲 boundary con-
in greater detail in the next section. ditions are provided everywhere on the boundary, the arbitrary
constant can be determined by specifying at least one Dirichlet T j⫹1 ⫺T j⫺1
boundary condition. Therefore, a modified Kirchhoff transform is Ci j⫽ when j⬍i max . (11c)
2
required.
冕 k共 T 兲
T By inverting the 关C兴 matrix, the values of the thermal conduc-
u⫽u 1 ⫹ dT (7) tivity can be obtained at the same locations where the temperature
T1 k 0 measurements were taken. The values of the temperature must be
sorted in ascending order 兵 T 1 ,T 2 , . . . ,T N 其 and identical tempera-
Here, k 0 is a reference conductivity value and T 1 is the minimum ture readings must be discarded. This system represents N – 1
value of the measured boundary temperature. The minimum value equations for N unknowns. The additional equation arises from
of Kirchhoff function, u min , occurs at the minimum temperature, the knowledge of the conductivity at the minimum temperature
T min . Thus, u 1 ⫽T 1 ⫽T min makes one Dirichlet boundary condi- point. At this point both the heat flux, Q 兩 T min, and the normal
tion. Then, the boundary element method can be used to obtain
the values of the heat function 兵U其 on the entire boundary except derivative of the heat function, k 0 ( ⳵ u/ ⳵ n) 兩 u min⫽k(⳵T/⳵n)兩Tmin are
at the location of the minimum temperature reading. At this point, known from the boundary element method solution.
the normal derivative q 1 ⫽( ⳵ u/ ⳵ n) 1 will be computed since T min The trapezoid rule provided good results, but the predicted val-
is specified there. ues of the thermal conductivity were often oscillatory. Simpson’s
Now that the nodal boundary values of 兵U其 are known, the rule was attempted to remove this oscillatory behavior and it was
entire field of heat functions is known. At any interior point, the successful at doing this, but the k(T) curve that it predicted was
values of the Kirchhoff heat function can be obtained in a post- often incorrect at the endpoints of the measured temperature
processing fashion. Since the boundary value problem is over- range. Instead, very good results were obtained by simply averag-
specified, a number of steady temperature measurements, taken ing the results predicted by the trapezoid rule.
either nonintrusively on the boundary, or intrusively, at isolated Regularization was required to properly invert the 关C兴 matrix
interior points, can be used to convert the heat functions, u(T), whenever random error was introduced into the temperature mea-
into the corresponding values of thermal conductivity, k(T), at surements. Tikhonov’s regularization 共关20兴兲 is a single-parameter
the same physical locations where the measuring instruments were minimization where the solution vector 兵 K/k 0 其 minimizes the
placed. Thus, knowing both vectors 兵U其 and 兵T其, the vector 兵K其 weighted sum of the norm of the error vector. A minimum error
can be determined by performing numerical differentiation of 兵U其. norm was found by differentiating Eq. 共10兲 with respect to each
A book by Hansen 关13兴 represents an authoritative text on the component of the unknown vector 兵 K/k 0 其 and setting the result
general aspects of ill-conditioning and numerical differentiation. equal to zero. Substituting the singular value decomposition
For the benefit of general engineering audience we will provide a where 关 C兴 ⫽ 关 E兴关 W兴关 D兴共关21–22兴兲 and solving for the unknown
detailed set of various numerical differentiation procedures that vector 兵K其 resulted in
were tested with the objective of finding the most appropriate
algorithm for the determination of k(T). 1
兵 K其 ⫽ 关 E兴共关 W兴 T 关 W兴 ⫹␭ 关 I兴兲 ⫺1 关 W兴 T 关 D兴共 1⫺T min兲兵 U其
In order to evaluate the sensitivity of the algorithm to errors in k0
the measurement data, random errors based on the Gaussian prob- (12)
ability density distribution were added intentionally to the tem-
perature and heat flux measurements. A random number 0⬍R where 关I兴 is the identity matrix. Tikhonov’s regularization is a
⬍1 with a uniform distribution was generated using a standard generalization of least-squares truncation, but instead of simply
utility subroutine. The desired variance ␴ 2 was specified and error eliminating terms associated with small singular values, they are
was added to the analytic temperature data points, T analyt . weighted by a factor (1⫹␭/w 2 ), where w are the eigenvalues of
matrix 关C兴. Larger regularization parameters, ␭, had the effect of
T n ⫽T analyt⫾ 冑⫺2 ␴ 2 ln R (8) increased smoothing of the k(T) curve without adding error into
the solution of the heat conduction equation 共关18兴兲.
3.1 Trapezoid Rule for Inverting u„T… Function. Given A similar regularization procedure 共关23,13兴兲 provided even
the value of the computed heat function and the measured tem- greater smoothing of the predicted k(T) function with the addition
perature at the same point on the boundary, the thermal conduc- of a smoothing matrix 关S兴.
tivity can be determined at that point via the inverse Kirchhoff’s
transform. The integral can be evaluated numerically using the 1
trapezoid rule. 兵 K其 ⫽ 关关 C兴 T 关 C兴 ⫹ ␥ 关 S兴兴 ⫺1 关 C兴 T 共 1⫺T min兲兵 U其 (13)
k0
冕冉冊
N
k共 T 兲
T k n ⫹k n⫺1 The smoothing parameter, ␥, was increased with the increased
u n ⫽u 1 ⫹
T1 k 0
dT⫽T 1 ⫹
n⫽2
兺
共 T n ⫺T n⫺1 兲
2k 0
(9)
amount of error in the temperature and/or heat flux boundary con-
ditions. The optimal magnitude of ␥ was proportional to the
The values of temperature, T n , are known at a finite number of square of the error in temperature.
boundary locations. At these points, the values of the computed
heat function, u n , are also known. Therefore, the values of ther-
mal conductivity, k n , at these points can be determined using the 3.2 Finite Differentiation for Inverting u„T… Function.
Kirchhoff’s transformation. The inverse of the Kirchhoff’s trans- As an alternative method, the nodal quantities of 兵U其 and 兵T其 were
formation can be expressed as a system of algebraic equations easily converted into values of thermal conductivity 兵K其 using
represented in the following matrix form: finite difference formulas. Second and third-order accurate finite
difference formulas for thermal conductivity, k i,2 and k i,3 , respec-
关 C兴兵 K/k 0 其 ⫽ 兵 U⫺Tmin其 (10) tively, were used with irregular temperature intervals. Thus,
where the elements of the lower-triangular matrix, 关C兴, have been
␦ u1
determined as follows: k i,2⫽ (14)
␦ T1
T 2 ⫺T 1
C i1 ⫽ when j⫽1 (11a) ␦ u1 ␦ T2 2 ⫺ ␦ u2 ␦ T1
2
2
k i,3⫽ (15)
T j ⫺T j⫺1
␦ T2 ␦ T3
C ii ⫽ when i⫽ j (11b)
2 where
␦ u1 ⫽u i⫹1 共 T i ⫺T i⫺1 兲 2 ⫺u i 关共 T i ⫺T i⫺1 兲 2 ⫺ 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i 兲 2 兴 using Fourier sine and cosine series basis functions, but the results
were less than satisfactory, with large oscillations increasing with
⫺u i⫺1 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i 兲 2 (16a) increasing input error.
␦ u2 ⫽u i⫹2 共 T i ⫺T i⫺2 兲 ⫺u i 关共 T i ⫺T i⫺2 兲 ⫺ 共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i 兲兴
2 2 2
3.3.1 Polynomial Basis Functions. The thermal conductivity
was represented by a standard series of polynomial basis func-
⫺u i⫺1 共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i 兲 2
(16b) tions.
␦ T1 ⫽ 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i 兲共 T i ⫺T i⫺1 兲共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i⫺1 兲 (16c) k 共 T 兲 ⫽c 1 ⫹c 2 T⫹c 3 T 2 ⫹ . . . ⫹c M T M ⫺1 (20)
␦ T2 ⫽ ␦ T1 共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i 兲共 T i ⫺T i⫺2 兲共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i⫺2 兲 (16d) The Kirchhoff function, u(T), was obtained by analytical indefi-
␦ T3 ⫽ 关共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i 兲共 T i ⫺T i⫺2 兲 ⫺ 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i 兲共 T i ⫺T i⫺1 兲兴 nite integration of these polynomials with respect to temperature,
(16e) thereby yielding an additional basis function coefficient, c 0 . The
general linear least-squares algorithm then determined the un-
␦ T1
2
⫽ 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i 兲 2 共 T i ⫺T i⫺1 兲 2 共 T i⫹1 ⫺T i⫺1 兲 (16f) known coefficients, c 0 ,c 1 , . . . ,c M .
␦ T2
2
⫽ 共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i 兲 2 共 T i ⫺T i⫺2 兲 2 共 T i⫹2 ⫺T i⫺2 兲 . (16g) 3.3.2 Chebyshev Basis Functions. The thermal conductivity
variation was represented by the series of orthogonal Chebyshev
Here, k i,2 and k i,3 are the thermal conductivities obtained at the ith functions,
boundary node with the second and third-order differencing for-
M
mulas, respectively. These finite difference formulas gave satis-
factory results for k(T) whenever the errors in the temperature k共 T 兲⫽ 兺
m⫽0
c m cos共 m arccos共 ␪ 兲兲 , (21)
measurements were small. The use of finite differencing method
required the discarding of temperature readings that were within where the temperature was affected by a change of variable.
the error bounds of the temperature readings.
T⫺ 共 T min⫹T max兲 /2
␪⫽ (22)
共 T max⫺T min兲 /2
3.3 Linear Least Squares for Inverting u„T… Function.
In an effort to improve the inverse procedure, as well as to utilize In order to use these functions to approximate the u(T) data,
an a priori knowledge about the general shape of thermal conduc- the Chebyshev basis functions were integrated numerically. When
tivity function, k(T), a general linear least-squares algorithm the explicit polynomial expressions were used instead of the trigo-
共关21,22兴兲 was employed. The objective of this approach was to fit nometric functions, the basis functions were integrated analyti-
the set of N data points 关 T n ,u n 兴 to a selected mathematical model. cally. The general linear least-squares algorithm then determined
The general linear least-squares model used a linear combination the coefficients of the integrated Chebyshev basis functions.
of M basis functions.
3.3.3 Beta-Spline Basis Functions. The Kirchhoff function
M
was represented by a piecewise beta-spline of cubic polynomial
u共 T 兲⫽ 兺 c m P m共 T 兲 (17) segments, b k (s).
冋册
m⫽1
N vert 3
where P 1 (T), P 2 (T), . . . , P M (T) are arbitrary fixed nonlinear
functions of temperature, called the basis functions. The merit
u共 T 兲⫽ 兺兺
i⫽1 k⫽⫺1
b k 共 ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 ,s 兲 V i⫹k (23)
function, called chi-squared, ␹ 2 , is a measure of how well the
models fit the data. It assumes that the measurement errors are Each segment was regarded as a weighted average of its four local
supplied as standard deviations, ␴ 1 , of the temperature. Then, vertices, so that each segment was a function of the parameter
冋册
s(T) in a nondimensional curve-following coordinate system that
M
varied from 0 at the beginning of the segment to 1 at the end of
N u i⫺ 兺 c m P m共 T n 兲 that segment.
兺
m⫽1
␹ ⫽
2
. (18) T⫺T min
␴n s 共 T 兲 ⫽1⫹
n⫽1 共 N ⫺1 兲
T max⫺T min vert
The minimum of this function occurs where the derivative of ␹ 2
with respect to all M basis function coefficients, c m , vanishes.
The resulting system of equations was cast into the following
covariance matrix formulation:
⫺int 1⫹ 再 T⫺T min
共 N ⫺1 兲
T max⫺T min vert 冎 (24)
冋兺册再兺冎
N N
Here, the int兵其 function also defines the truncated integer value of
P i共 T n 兲 P j共 T n 兲 u n P i共 T n 兲 its argument. V i⫹k are the control vertex coordinates and
兵 cj 其 ⫽ . (19) b k ( ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 ,s) are the basis functions. Given a temperature T, the
n⫽1 ␴ 2n n⫽1 ␴ 2n
local beta-spline was controlled by the i – 1 to i⫹2 vertices,
Here, 兵c其 is the vector of unknown basis function coefficients. The where the index i was determined from the above integer trunca-
inversion of the covariance matrix with Gaussian elimination or tion. Each basis function was itself described as a cubic polyno-
the SVD algorithm 共关21,22兴兲 yielded the basis function coeffi- mial.
cients. Knowing these coefficients, the basis functions were dif- 3
兺c
ferentiated with respect to temperature in order to obtain the val-
ues of thermal conductivity, k n , at the N data points. b k 共 ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 ,s 兲 ⫽ j,k 共 ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 兲 s
j
(25)
j⫽0
The challenge here was to select an appropriate set of the basis
functions that best modeled the integral of the thermal conductiv- The unknown constants c j,k ( ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 ) were fixed quantities, pro-
ity function. In this paper, several basis functions were attempted; vided ␤ 1 and ␤ 2 were fixed. They were found by imposing the
standard polynomials, Chebyshev polynomials, and third-order three connectivity boundary conditions on any two neighboring
beta-splines 共关24兴兲, in addition to nonarbitrary basis functions in segments 共关24兴兲. The shape parameter ␤ 1 is referred to as the bias
which a priori knowledge of the k(T) curve was assumed. In the parameter. It could produce clustering towards the end vertices.
latter case, for example, arctangent integral basis functions were The second parameter, ␤ 2 , is called the tension parameter, and it
used to estimate a step-like k(T) variation. These basis functions was always positive. For high values of ␤ 2 , the curve is strongly
were integrated either analytically or numerically. We also tried pulled toward the control vertices and, in the limit as ␤ 2 →⬁, the
beta-spline is identical to the control polygon. The least-squares function coefficient affected the u(T) curve from the beginning of
fitting algorithm 共关22兴兲 determined the beta-spline control vertices the curve (T⫽T min) up to the local temperature, T.
as basis function coefficients. The thermal conductivity function
was then determined by numerically differentiating the piecewise
spline with respect to the temperature. 4 Numerical Results
In an alternative approach, the k(T) curve was modeled with All of the above-mentioned methods have been programmed
the beta-spline, while the Kirchhoff function, u(T), was evaluated and tested on a simple two-dimensional specimen and an uncon-
as the integral of it. ventionally shaped two-dimensional specimen. The general for-
冕兺冋兺册
T
N vert 3 mulation of this inverse methodology is also applicable to arbi-
1
u共 T 兲⫽ b k 共 ␤ 1 , ␤ 2 ,s 兲 V i⫹k dT⫹c 0 (26) trary three-dimensional objects.
k0 0 i⫽1 k⫽⫺1
4.1 Results for a Rectangular Plate. Although the inverse
In both cases, the beta-spline curve was either numerically dif- boundary element method approach with the Kirchhoff’s trans-
ferentiated or numerically integrated. When using the differenti- form is directly applicable to arbitrary three-dimensional prob-
ated beta-spline, the basis function coefficients influenced only a lems, for the sake of simplicity it will be demonstrated on a two-
local portion of the k(T) curve between the i – 1 to i⫹2 control dimensional geometry. A rectangular plate test specimen 10-cm
vertices. When the integrated beta-spline was used, each basis wide by 1-cm long was used. The opposite ends of the plate were
Fig. 1 Variation of the thermal conductivity versus temperature for various amounts of input error in temperature „a… ␴
Ä0.0°C, „b… ␴ Ä0.1 °C, „c… ␴ Ä1.0°C, and „d… ␴ Ä5.0°C. The inverse boundary element method results are compared to the actual
linear conductivity versus temperature function, where ␤ Ä0.05°CÀ1 , T 0 Ä0.0°C, and k 0 Ä1.0 W mÀ1 °C.
kept at constant temperatures of 100.0°C and 0.0°C, respectively.
The long side walls were considered to be adiabatic.
When the conductivity versus temperature was a linear func-
tion,
k 共 T 兲 ⫽k 0 共 1⫹ ␤ 共 T⫺T 0 兲兲 , (27)
the temperatures and heat fluxes can be found from an analytic
solution 共关25兴兲,
␤ 2
2 冉 ␤
2
␤
冊冉
T ⫹T⫽ T hot⫹ T 2hot ⫺ 1⫹ 共 T hot⫹T cold兲
2 冊
共 z hot⫺z cold兲
⫻ 共 T ⫺T cold兲 . (28)
共 z cold⫺z hot兲 hot
For the computational analysis, each of the long sides of the
specimen was discretized with 40 equal-length linear isoparamet-
ric boundary elements. Only four such elements were used on
each of the two short sides. In the case of an actual experimental
evaluation of the surface heat fluxes this means that a single heat
flux probe was applied at a total of 88 locations corresponding to
the midpoints of the 88 boundary elements. The forward boundary
element method solution compared very well with the analytic
solution, averaging an error of less than 0.1 percent for a wide Fig. 2 Predicted temperature-dependence of thermal conduc-
tivity when errors were added to the heat fluxes compared to
range of the parameter ␤ 共关14兴兲. the actual linear variation of k „ T …
4.1.1 Linear Variation of Thermal Conductivity. The actual
variation of thermal conductivity versus temperature was linear
between the values of k(T⫽0°C)⫽1.0 Wm⫺1°C and k(T
⫽100.0°C)⫽6.0 Wm⫺1°C. The top and bottom walls of the rect- It is noticeable that the predicted thermal conductivity values
angular plate were specified to be adiabatic. The right and left end are somewhat biased towards the hot end of the test specimen
walls were specified with the heat flux taken from the analytic 共Fig. 2兲. This was most likely due to the fact that the only Dirich-
let 共temperature兲 boundary condition was specified on the cold
solution (Q⫽⫾35.0 Wm⫺2), except for the center of the right
end. This confirms our earlier observations 共关18兴兲 that the farthest
side at which a single temperature measurement was specified,
point from the overspecified temperature boundary condition has
T min .
the greatest amount of bias in the predicted temperature and, sub-
The boundary element method computed the Kirchhoff’s heat
sequently, thermal conductivity.
functions at each of the boundary nodes. These heat functions
were inverted into values of thermal conductivity at the nodes 4.1.3 Steep Jump Variation of Thermal Conductivity. Next,
where the overspecified temperature measurements were pro- the actual variation of thermal conductivity versus temperature
vided. These temperatures existed at discrete locations along the was described by the arctangent function.
adiabatic long sides of the specimen.
Figure 1 shows the predicted values of thermal conductivity 1 1
k共 T 兲⫽ 共 1⫺ ␰ 兲 k min⫹ 共 1⫹ ␰ 兲 k max
versus temperature using various procedures for inverting the 2 2
冉冊
u(T) function. Errors in the temperature measurements were
simulated by adding standard deviations of 0.1°C up to 5.0°C 共0.1 k max⫺k min 共 T max⫹T min兲
␰⫽ arctan ␣ (29)
percent to 5.0 percent兲. All of the inverse methods had very good 2␲ 2
accuracy whenever the errors were less than 1.0 percent. For er-
Here, ␣ is a parameter that sets the slope of the jump in the k-T
rors above 1.0 percent, only the Twomey regularization procedure
curve. The top and bottom walls of the rectangular plate were
and the linear least squares with polynomial basis functions were
specified to be adiabatic and the right and left walls were specified
accurate enough. The beta-spline basis functions were not used on
with the heat flux taken from the well-posed boundary element
this example. The magnitude of the optimum Twomey regulariza-
tion parameter, ␥, was proportional to the square of the average method solution (Q⫽⫾15.0 Wm⫺2). The boundary temperatures
temperature. The Chebyshev polynomial and beta-spline methods were taken from the well-posed boundary element method solu-
had problems at the endpoints due to their oscillatory nature. The tion and prescribed to the inverse program with varying degrees of
linear least-squares with polynomial basis functions were the most error 共␴ ⫽0.0, 0.1°C, 1.0°C, and 5.0°C兲. Figure 3 shows the com-
accurate because the actual conductivity and Kirchhoff functions puted k-T curves when the Tikhonov, Twomey, and finite differ-
were represented by polynomials. encing inverse methods were used. Again with these methods, the
results were good when the input temperature measurements have
4.1.2 Errors in the Heat Flux Boundary Conditions. The in- errors with a standard deviation of less than 0.5°C.
verse procedure was also evaluated given errors in the measured Figure 4 shows the results of the linear least-squares algorithm
heat fluxes. The behavior of the inverse algorithm on the same whenever polynomial, arctangent, and Chebyshev basis functions
rectangular test specimen with linear temperature-dependence of were used. Notice that the use of arctangent basis functions pro-
thermal conductivity was observed with intentionally introduced duced very accurate results, indicative of the advantage of having
errors in the measured heat fluxes of 1.0 percent, 5.0 percent, and at least some a priori knowledge of the k(T) function shape. The
10.0 percent. It is remarkable that the inverse algorithm is less oscillatory behavior of the polynomial and Chebyshev basis func-
sensitive to errors in the measured heat fluxes 共Fig. 2兲 than in the tions is evident in these figures, but the general nature of the k(T)
measured temperatures. This was because heat fluxes were ap- curve was captured.
plied as boundary conditions to the boundary element method, and Beta splines were also used with the least squares in an attempt
the Laplacian operator smoothed errors in these heat fluxes. On to reduce the severity of these oscillations. Figure 5 presents the
the other hand, errors in the measured temperatures directly affect results when using the beta-spline basis functions. Here, the beta-
the results of the inverse procedure. spline was used to approximate the u(T) curve so that the thermal
Fig. 3 Variation of the thermal conductivity versus tempera- Fig. 4 Variation of the thermal conductivity versus tempera-
ture for various levels of input error in temperature, „a…: ␴ ture for various levels of input error in temperature, „a…: ␴
Ä0.0°C, and „b…: ␴ Ä0.5°C. The boundary element method re- Ä1.0°C, and „b…: ␴ Ä5.0°C. The inverse boundary element
sults are compared to the actual arctangent conductivity ver- method results are compared to the actual arctangent conduc-
sus temperature function when ␦ Ä1.0°CÀ1 . tivity versus temperature function when ␦ Ä1.0°CÀ1 .
conductivity was numerically differentiated. The oscillations were 4.2 Inverse Determination of Thermal Conductivity of
somewhat suppressed at low input errors, but they became worse Copper at Low Temperatures. Thermal conductivity reaches
with input errors above 1.0 percent. Although more beta-spline very high values at very low temperatures because the lattice
vertices produced more accurate representations of the k(T) curve waves are harmonic and can be superimposed without mutual in-
at low input error, the reduction in the number of beta-spline terference. There, the lattice thermal conductivity of crystals de-
vertices was needed at higher input errors because the oscillatory pends upon the grain size. As the temperature increases, the lattice
behavior of the beta-splines needed to be reduced. Consequently, vibrations become nonharmonic, scattering is increased, and the
the number of beta-spline vertices had to be reduced from 48 with thermal conductivity decreases sharply. In metals, heat is pre-
no input error, down to six vertices for the cases with 5.0 percent dominantly transported by valence electrons rather than by the
input error. lattice vibrations, but the effect is the same. The electronic com-
As an alternative, the option of fitting the integrated beta-spline ponent of thermal conductivity is dependent upon the scale of the
slightly improved the results. This improvement was probably due impurities rather than upon the crystal grain size and, in pure
to the fact that the coefficients of the integrated beta-spline had a metals, is one to two orders of magnitude larger than the lattice
more global impact on the least squares objective. Figure 6 dem- conductivity. The thermal conductivity decreases sharply beyond
onstrates the ability of the inverse formulation to capture a steep 10.0 K primarily because electrons are scattered by thermal vibra-
jump in thermal conductivity with the integrated beta splines. tions in the lattice.
Fig. 5 Variation of thermal conductivity versus temperature
predicted with the beta-spline basis functions. The inverse
boundary element method results are compared to the actual
arctangent conductivity versus temperature function when ␦
Ä1.0°CÀ1 .
Our inverse boundary element method algorithm was attempted

on a real material, copper, in the range of very low temperatures
to see if the temperature-dependency of thermal conductivity can
be determined where there are steep gradients in the k(T) func-
tion. The actual temperature-dependency was taken from the
Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data 共关26兴兲. The test
specimen had the same geometry and grid specifications as in the
previous examples.
When there was no error intentionally added to the temperature
measurements, the results of the inverse procedure were very ac-
curate for the methodologies used 共Fig. 7共a兲兲. The finite differenc-
ing and the least squares algorithm with beta-spline basis func-
Fig. 6 Variation of thermal conductivity versus temperature

predicted with the integrated beta-spline basis functions. The Fig. 7 Inverse determination of the thermal conductivity of
inverse boundary element method results are compared to the copper in the cryogenic range. The best inverse results are
actual arctangent conductivity versus temperature function shown with various levels of input error:„a… ␴ Ä0.0 K, „b… ␴
when ␦ Ä1.0°CÀ1 . Ä0.1 K, and „c… ␴ Ä1.0 K.
Fig. 9 Inverse prediction of thermal conductivity variation of
Fig. 8 Temperature contours predicted by nonlinear boundary an arbitrarily shaped specimen made of copper
element method within an arbitrarily shape specimen that was
internally heated and made of copper „b…
measurements. It is fast and accurate, requiring the knowledge of
overspecified steady-state temperature and heat flux or heat trans-
tions had greater difficulty in capturing the curve once the errors fer coefficients over at least a portion of the boundary. The bound-
were increased much beyond 0.1 K. The Twomey regularization ary element method was used to determine the field of the Kirch-
procedure stayed effective beyond errors of 1.0 K. Figure 7共c兲 hoff transform function and its inversion yielded values of thermal
demonstrates that the accuracy of the solution is affected by the conductivity at the locations and temperatures of the instrument
magnitude of the regularization parameter. The best result existed readings. Several different inversion procedures were attempted,
at very high values of ␥, and also where the k-T curve was the including regularization, finite differencing, and least-squares fit-
smoothest, that is, where the integrated function, dk/dT, was at ting with basis functions. The program was very accurate when
the first local minimum. the data was without error. For most of the inversion procedures it
4.3 Applicability to Arbitrary Shapes. To demonstrate the did not excessively amplify input temperature measurement errors
applicability of the general inverse methodology to specimens of when those errors were less than one to five percent standard
arbitrary shapes, we developed the geometry shown in Fig. 8. This deviation. The program was found to be less sensitive to measure-
object was assumed to be made of a homogenous material with an ment errors in heat fluxes than to errors in temperatures. The
internally heated cylindrical core and an attachment 共bottom sur- accuracy of the algorithm was greatly increased with the use of a
face兲 kept at a very cold temperature. The forward 共direct兲 bound- priori knowledge about the thermal conductivity basis functions.
ary element method heat conduction algorithm solved for the tem- One computational solution required only several seconds on a
perature field in the object such that the internal circular boundary personal computer.
was held at a constant temperature of 100.0 K and the bottom of
the cold attachment was held at a constant temperature of 0.0 K. Acknowledgments
All other boundaries were assumed to be adiabatic. Figure 8
shows the predicted isotherms in the object made of copper. The authors are grateful for the NASA-Penn State Space Pro-
Next, the material of the object was assumed to be unknown. pulsion Engineering Center Graduate Student Fellowship facili-
The temperatures predicted on the outer 共adiabatic兲 circular tated by Prof. Charles Merkle, the National Science Foundation
boundary by the forward boundary element method were applied Grant DMI-9522854 monitored by Dr. George Hazelrigg, the
as the overspecified boundary conditions for the inverse thermal NASA Lewis Research Center Grant NAG3-1995 facilitated by
conductivity problem. Only temperatures were assumed known on Dr. John Lytle and administered by Dr. Cestutis Civinskas, and
the inner circular boundary and the bottom of the attachment. for ALCOA Foundation Faculty Fellowship administered by Dr.
Twomey smoothing was used to invert the coefficient matrix aris- Yimin Ruan.
ing from the trapezoid rule. The ␤-spline was used as the alterna-
tive method with 16 vertices computed as the unknown coeffi- Nomenclature
cients of the least-squares method. The inversely predicted
thermal conductivity variations with temperature are shown in F ⫽ objective function
Fig. 9. This figure shows results with and without intentionally 关G兴 ⫽ geometric coefficient matrix
introduced errors in the boundary temperature data. Notice that 关H兴 ⫽ geometric coefficient matrix
the inverse prediction of the k(T) is very good over the entire h ⫽ thermal convection coefficient
range of measured temperatures for this doubly connected two- k ⫽ thermal conductivity
dimensional object. Q ⫽ heat flux
q ⫽ Kirchhoff’s heat flux
兵Q其 ⫽ vector of Kirchhoff’s heat fluxes
5 Conclusions R ⫽ random number
An inverse computational procedure has been developed to pre- T ⫽ temperature
dict the unknown temperature variation of thermal conductivity u ⫽ Kirchhoff’s heat function
for arbitrarily shaped test specimens. The procedure is entirely 兵U其 ⫽ vector of Kirchhoff’s heat functions
nonintrusive and nondestructive, relying only upon boundary z ⫽ coordinate
Greek Letters 关9兴 Yang, C.-Y., 1997, ‘‘Non-Iterative Solution of Inverse Heat Conduction Prob-
lems in One Dimension,’’ Commun. Numer. Meth. Eng., 13, pp. 419–427.
␣ ⫽ coefficient of steepness of k-T curve 关10兴 Huang, C.-H., Yan, J.-Y., and Chen, H.-T., 1995, ‘‘Function Estimation in
␤ ⫽ coefficient of non-linearity of k-T curve Predicting Temperature-Dependent Thermal Conductivity Without Internal
⌫ ⫽ boundary or surface of an object Measurements,’’ AIAA J. Thermophys. Heat Transf., 9, No. 4, Oct.–Dec., pp.
␥ ⫽ Twomey regularization parameter 667–673.
关11兴 Sawaf, B., Ozisik, M. N., and Jarny, Y., 1995, ‘‘An Inverse Analysis to Esti-
␴ ⫽ standard deviation mate Linearly Temperature Dependent Thermal Conductivity Components and
Superscripts Heat Capacity of an Orthotropic Medium,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 38, No.
16, pp. 3005–3010.
meas ⫽ measured or specified value 关12兴 Arpaci, V. S., 1966, Conduction Heat Transfer, Addison-Wesley, Reading,
comp ⫽ computed or predicted value MA.
关13兴 Hansen, P. C., 1997, Rank-Deficient and Discrete Ill-Posed Problems: Nu-
Subscripts merical Aspects of Linear Inversion, SIAM, Philadelphia, PA.
关14兴 Dulikravich, G. S., and Martin, T. J., 1996, ‘‘Inverse Shape and Boundary
analyt ⫽ analytic Condition Problems and Optimization in Heat Conduction,’’ Advances in Nu-
cold ⫽ cold boundary merical Heat Transfer, W. J. Minkowycz and E. M. Sparrow, eds., Taylor &
hot ⫽ hot boundary Francis, London, pp. 324–367.
max ⫽ maximum value 关15兴 Martin, T. J., and Dulikravich, G. S., 1997, ‘‘Non-Iterative Inverse Determi-
min ⫽ minimum value nation of Temperature-Dependent Heat Conductivities,’’ Symposium on In-
verse Design Problems in Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, Vol. 2, G. S. Du-
0 ⫽ reference value likravich, and K. A. Woodbury, eds., ASME, New York, pp. 141–150.
1,2 ⫽ end points of an interval 关16兴 Banerjee, P. K., and Raveendra, S. T., 1981, Boundary Element Methods in
Engineering Science, McGraw-Hill, London.
References 关17兴 Brebbia, C. A., 1978, The Boundary Element Method for Engineers, John
Wiley and Sons, New York.
关1兴 Annual Book of Standards, 1997, Section 4, Vol. 04.06, Thermal Insulation; 关18兴 Martin, T. J., and Dulikravich, G. S., 1996, ‘‘Inverse Determination of Bound-
Environmental Acoustics, ASTM Designation: C 177-97. ary Conditions in Steady Heat Conduction with Heat Generation,’’ ASME J.
关2兴 Beck, J. V., Blackwell, B., and St. Clair, C. R., 1985, Inverse Heat Conduc- Heat Transfer, 118, No. 3,pp. 546–554.
tion: III-Posed Problems, John Wiley and Sons, New York. 关19兴 Brebbia, C. A., and Dominguez, J., 1989, Boundary Elements: An Introductory
关3兴 Alifanov, O. M., 1994, Inverse Heat Transfer Problems, Springer-Verlag, Ber- Course, McGraw-Hill, New York.
lin. 关20兴 Tikhonov, A. N., and Arsenin, V. Y., 1977, Solutions of Ill-Posed Problems,
关4兴 Artyukhin, E. A., 1993, ‘‘Iterative Algorithms for Estimating Temperature- V. H. Winston, Washington, DC.
Dependent Thermophysical Characteristics,’’ Proceedings of Inverse Prob-
关21兴 Golub, G. H., and Van Loan, C. F., 1996, Matrix Computations, 3rd Ed., Johns
lems in Engineering, Theory and Practice, N. Zabaras, et al., eds., ASME,
Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD.
New York, pp. 101–108.
关22兴 Press, W. H., Teukolsky, S. A., Vetterling, W. T., and Flannery, B. P., 1986,
关5兴 Beck, J. V., and Arnold, K. J., 1997, Parameter Estimation in Engineering and
Science, John Wiley and Sons, New York. Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN, The Art of Scientific Computing, 2nd Ed.,
关6兴 Orlande, H. R. B., and Ozisik, M. N., 1993, ‘‘Determination of the Reaction Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Function in a Reaction-Diffusion Parabolic Problem,’’ Inverse Problems in 关23兴 Twomey, S., 1963, ‘‘On the Numerical Solution of Fredholm Integral Equa-
Engineering: Theory and Practice, N. Zabaras et al., eds., ASME, New York, tions of the First Kind by the Inversion of the Linear System Produced by
pp. 117–124. Quadrature,’’ J. Assoc. Comput. Mach., 10, No. 1, pp. 78–101.
关7兴 Dantas, L. B., and Orlande, H. R. B., 1996, ‘‘A Function Estimation Approach 关24兴 Barsky, B. A., 1988, Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling Using
for Determining Temperature-Dependent Thermophysical Properties,’’ Inverse Beta-Splines, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Probl. Eng., 3, No. 4, pp. 261–280. 关25兴 Chapman, A. J., 1960, Heat Transfer, McMillan, New York.
关8兴 Lam, T. T., and Yeung, W. K., 1995, ‘‘Inverse Determination of Thermal 关26兴 Ho, C. Y., Powell, R. W., and Liley P. E., 1974, Thermal Conductivity of the
Conductivity for One-Dimensional Problems,’’ J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer, Elements: A Comprehensive Review, Journal of Physical and Chemical Ref-
9, No. 2, pp. 335–344. erence Data, Vol. 3, Supplement No. 1.
Inverse Convection Problem for
Determining Wall Heat Flux in
H.-Y. Li1
e-mail: hyli@huafan.hfu.edu.tw
Annular Duct Flow
W.-M. Yan An inverse problem for unsteady forced convection in an annular duct is presented. The
simulated temperature data taken at the outer wall are used to estimate the time-
Department of Mechanical Engineering, dependent axially varying surface heat flux distribution at the inner wall of the annular
Hua Fan University, passage. No prior information on the functional form of the unknown wall heat flux is
Shihtin, Taipei, Taiwan 22305, R.O.C. needed in the inverse method. The effects of the functional form of the wall heat flux, the
number of the measurement points, and the measurement errors on the accuracy of the
estimation are investigated. It is shown that the reconstruction of the timewise and spatial
variations of the wall heat flux is satisfactory even if the estimated function is not smooth.
关S0022-1481共00兲01003-3兴
Keywords: Annular Flow, Forced Convection, Heat Transfer, Inverse, Laminar
Introduction Analysis
Inverse heat conduction problems concerned with the determi- Direct Problem. The problem considered here is the laminar
nation of the thermal boundary conditions, the initial condition, or hydrodynamically developed flow inside an annular duct 共see Fig.
the thermal properties of a heated body have been generally 1兲. As shown in the figure, two concentric tubes of circular cross
treated in the last few decades. The texts by Beck et al. 关1兴 and section have inner radius r i and outer radius r o , respectively.
Alifanov 关2兴 give an excellent comprehensive review about in- Flow enters the annular passage with a uniform temperature T e
verse heat conduction problems. While inverse heat conduction and fully developed velocity profile u(r). Initially, the whole sys-
problems are now well documented, inverse problems of heat contem is maintained at a uniform temperature T e . At time t⬎0, the
vection have just begun to receive much attention. Raghunath 关3兴, inner wall is suddenly subjected to a heat flux q(x,t), while the
Bokar and Ozisik 关4兴, and Liu and Ozisik 关5兴 considered the in- outer wall is kept thermally insulated. The heat exchange between
verse convection problem of determining the inlet temperature of the flow and wall starts to occur. In this study, the properties of
a thermally developing hydrodynamically developed laminar flow the fluid are assumed to be constant. Besides, only high Peclet
between parallel plates from temperature measurements taken number flow is treated here so that the axial fluid conduction is
downstream of the entrance. Moutsoglou 关6兴 investigated the negligibly small. It is intended to provide a first step toward future
steady-state inverse forced convection problem between parallel work, in which these effects will be considered. Then, by intro-
flat plates. He determined the boundary heat flux of the top wall ducing the following dimensionless quantities
from measured temperature data at the bottom wall by using the
straight inversion and the whole domain regularization schemes. x r
Huang and Ozisik 关7兴 determined the spacewise variation of the ␰⫽ ␩⫽
D h Pe ro
wall heat flux for laminar flow through a parallel plate duct from
temperature data taken inside the fluid at several different loca- ␣t u
tions along the flow. Liu and Ozisik 关8兴 estimated the timewise ␶⫽ U⫽
D 2h ū
variation of the wall heat flux for transient turbulent forced con-
vection inside parallel plate ducts from simulated transient tem- k 共 T⫺T e 兲 ri
perature data. The unknown wall heat fluxes or inlet temperatures ␪⫽ ␭⫽
D h q ref ro
to be estimated are of one variable in these inverse convection
problems. Convective heat transfer in annular flows is important ūD h q
in many engineering applications, including, among others, heat Pe⫽ Q⫽
exchangers, nuclear reactors, and cooling of electronic systems. ␣ 2 共 1⫺␭ 兲 q ref
冋冉冊册
The inverse analysis provides an appropriate way to determine
1⫺␭ 2
crucial parameters in these applications when direct measure- 2 1⫺ ␩ 2 ⫺ ln ␩
ments of the desired quantities, such as the inlet temperature or ln ␭
D h ⫽2 共 r o ⫺r i 兲 U⫽ 2 , (1)
the wall heat flux, are not possible. 1⫺␭
In the present study, the conjugate gradient method is adopted 1⫹␭ 2 ⫹
ln ␭
for the estimation of the inner wall heat flux for unsteady laminar
forced convection in an annular duct from the temperature mea- the governing equation in dimensionless form for the problem is
surements taken at the outer wall. The unknown wall heat flux to given by
冉冊
be estimated is a function of time and space. No prior information
is needed for the functional form of the wall heat flux in the ⳵␪ ⳵␪ 1 ⳵ ⳵␪
⫹U ⫽4 共 1⫺␭ 兲 2 ␩ (2a)
inverse analysis. ⳵␶ ⳵␰ ␩ ⳵␩ ⳵␩
1
To whom correspondence should be addressed. with the initial condition and the boundary conditions
HEAT TRANSFER and presented at the 1999 National Heat Transfer Conference. ␪ 共 ␰ , ␩ ,0兲 ⫽0 (2b)
Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, May 17, 1999; revision received,
February 29, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Zumbrunnen. ␪ 共 0,␩ , ␶ 兲 ⫽0 (2c)
The step size is determined from
兺兺冉 ⳵Q 冊
M N M N
⳵ ␪ i,k p
兺兺
i⫽1 k⫽1
共 ␪ i,k
p
⫺Z i,k 兲
m⫽1 n⫽1
p
d m,n
冋冊册
m,n
␤ ⫽
兺兺兺兺冉
p
M N M N 2 (8)
⳵ ␪ i,k p
p
d m,n
i⫽1 k⫽1 m⫽1 n⫽1 ⳵ Q m,n
where ⳵ ␪ i,k / ⳵ Q m,n is the sensitivity coefficient. To calculate the
sensitivity coefficient, we differentiate the direct problem with
respect to Q m,n to obtain the sensitivity problem, i.e.,
冉冊冉冊冉冉冊冊
Fig. 1 Geometry and coordinates
⳵ ⳵␪ ⳵ ⳵␪ 1 ⳵ ⳵ ⳵␪
⫹U ⫽4 共 1⫺␭ 兲 2 ␩
⳵ ␶ ⳵ Q m,n ⳵␰ ⳵ Q m,n ␩ ⳵␩ ⳵ ␩ ⳵ Q m,n
⳵ ␪ 共 ␰ ,1,␶ 兲 (9a)
⫽0 (2d)
⳵␩ ⳵ ␪ 共 ␰ , ␩ ,0兲
⫽0 (9b)
⳵ ␪ 共 ␰ ,␭, ␶ 兲 ⳵ Q m,n
⫽Q 共 ␰ , ␶ 兲 . (2e)
⳵␩ ⳵ ␪ 共 0,␩ , ␶ 兲
⫽0 (9c)
The direct problem considered here is to determine the tem- ⳵ Q m,n
冉冊
perature distribution in the flow field, while the velocity distribu-
tion, the initial condition, and the boundary conditions are given. ⳵ ⳵ ␪ 共 ␰ ,1,␶ 兲
⫽0 (9d)
The problem defined by the foregoing equations is solved by the ⳵␩ ⳵ Q m,n
冉冊
finite difference technique 共关9兴兲. The solution is marched in the
time and the downstream directions. A fully implicit numerical ⳵ ⳵ ␪ 共 ␰ ,␭, ␶ 兲
⫽û 共 ␰ ⫺ ␰ m , ␶ ⫺ ␶ n 兲 (9e)
scheme in which the unsteady energy storage term is approxi- ⳵␩ ⳵ Q m,n
mated by the backward difference, the axial convection term by for m⫽1,2, . . . ,M , n⫽1,2, . . . ,N, where
再
the upwind difference, and the radial diffusion term by the central
difference is employed to transform Eqs. 共2兲 into the finite differ- 1 ␰⫽␰m ,␶⫽␶n
ence equations. This system of equations is tridiagonal, which can û 共 ␰ ⫺ ␰ m , ␶ ⫺ ␶ n 兲 ⫽ . (9f)
0 otherwise
be solved efficiently by the Thomas algorithm 共关9兴兲.
The solution procedure for ␪ can be applied for ⳵ ␪ / ⳵ Q m,n , since
Inverse Problem. For the inverse problem, the temperature the governing equation, initial condition, and boundary conditions
data at the outer wall are provided as an additional input, but the for ⳵ ␪ / ⳵ Q m,n are similar to those for ␪.
heat flux at the inner wall Q( ␰ , ␶ ) is unknown. The reconstruction If the problem contains no measurement errors, the condition
of the wall heat flux from the knowledge of the measured tem-
perature data can be obtained by minimizing the objective func- p
J 共 Q m,n 兲⬍␦ (10)
tion
can be used for terminating the iterative process, where ␦ is a
M N small specified positive number. However, the measured tempera-
J⫽ 兺兺共␪
i⫽1 k⫽1
i,k ⫺Z i,k 兲
2
(3) ture data contain measurement errors. Following the computa-
tional experience, we use the discrepancy principle 共关11兴兲
where ␪ i,k ⫽ ␪ ( ␰ i ,1,␶ k ) is the calculated temperature for an esti- p
J 共 Q m,n 兲 ⬍M N ␴ 2 (11)
mated Q( ␰ , ␶ ) and Z i,k ⫽Z( ␰ i ,1,␶ k ) is the measured temperature
taken at the outer wall. M and N are the numbers of the measured as the stopping criterion, where ␴ is the standard deviation of the
data in the ␰ and ␶-directions, respectively. measurement errors.
The iterative process based on the conjugate gradient method The computational procedure for the inverse convection prob-
共关10兴兲 is used to determine the unknown wall heat flux Q( ␰ , ␶ ) lem is summarized as follows:
p⫹1
Q m,n ⫽Q m,n
p
⫺ ␤ p d m,n
p
(4) Step 1: Solve the sensitivity problem to calculate the sensitivity
coefficient ⳵ ␪ i,k / ⳵ Q m,n .
where Q m,n ⫽Q( ␰ m , ␶ n ), ␤ p is the step size, d m,n
p
is the direction Step 2: Pick an initial guess Q 0m,n and set p⫽0.
of descent which is determined from Step 3: Solve the direct problem to compute ␪ i,k .
冉冊 ⳵J p Step 4: Calculate the objective function. Terminate the iteration

p
d m,n ⫽ ⫹ ␥ p d m,n
p⫺1
(5) process if the specified stopping criterion is satisfied.
⳵ Q m,n Otherwise go to Step 5.
and the conjugate coefficient ␥ p is computed from Step 5: Knowing ⳵ ␪ i,k / ⳵ Q m,n , ␪ i,k , and Z i,k , compute the gra-
dient of the objective function ⳵ J/ ⳵ Q m,n .
兺兺冋冉 ⳵Q 冊册
M N
⳵J p 2
Step 6: Knowing ⳵ J/ ⳵ Q m,n , compute ␥ p and d m,n p
.
m⫽1 n⫽1 m,n
Step 7: Knowing ⳵ ␪ i,k / ⳵ Q m,n , ␪ i,k , Z i,k , and d m,n
p
, compute
␥ p⫽ with ␥ 0 ⫽0. ␤ p.
兺兺冋冉冊册
M N (6)
⳵J p⫺1 2
Step 8: Knowing ␤ p and d m,n p p⫹1
, compute Q m,n . Set p⫽ p⫹1 and
m⫽1 n⫽1 ⳵ Q m,n go to Step 3.
Here, ⳵ J/ ⳵ Q m,n is the gradient of the objective function. It is
determined by differentiating Eq. 共3兲 with respect to Q m,n to
obtain Results and Discussion
M N The accuracy of the inverse algorithm for the estimation of the
⳵J ⳵ ␪ i,k
⳵ Q m,n
⫽2
i⫽1
兺兺 k⫽1
共 ␪ i,k ⫺Z i,k 兲
⳵ Q m,n
. (7) inner wall heat flux is examined for four test examples by using
simulated measured temperature data at the outer wall. The simu-
Table 1 Comparison of ␪„1,1,␶… for various grid arrangements
␪共1,1,␶兲
␶ 21⫻21⫻21 41⫻41⫻41 81⫻81⫻81
0.3 1.07889 0.97874 0.91824
0.5 2.63416 2.63966 2.65034
0.8 3.63838 3.74104 3.79660
1 2.67688 2.75278 2.78851
lated measured temperature data, Z, are generated by adding ran-

dom errors to the exact temperature, ␪, computed from the solu-
tion of the direct problem
Z⫽ ␪ ⫹ ␴␨ (12)
where ␴ is the standard deviation of the measurement data, ␨ is a
random variable of normal distribution with zero mean and unit
standard deviation. In the present study, the radius ratio ␭ is fixed Fig. 3 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.02,
to be 0.5. Equally spaced measurements are taken both in 0⭐␰⭐1 M Ä41, N Ä41
and 0⭐␶⭐1 for all the examples considered. The data are used as
input to reconstruct the unknown wall heat flux in the inverse
problem. We examine the effects of the functional form of the ␴⫽0.02, respectively. The standard deviations of the measured
wall heat flux, the number of the measurement points, and the data are taken to be 0.01 and 0.02, which correspond to 0.7 per-
measurement errors on the accuracy of the estimation. Different cent and 1.4 percent relative errors based on the maximum dimen-
grid arrangements are used to ensure that the solution of the direct sionless measured temperature. Because the sinusoidal functions
problem is grid independent. The results obtained with various are smooth, the wall heat flux is well reconstructed from tempera-
grid points for the wall heat flux of example 1 are given in Table ture measurements taken at the outer wall. It is noted that the
1. It is found that the deviations in ␪ 共1, 1, ␶兲 calculated with grid accuracy of the estimation decreases as ␴ increases. In this paper,
41⫻41⫻41 and 81⫻81⫻81 are always less than 6.6 percent. The the inverse convection problem is solved in dimensionless form.
41⫻41⫻41 grid points are used for the solution of the direct To get some ideal of the corresponding dimensional variables, we
problem to illustrate the inverse methodology by considering nu- consider air at T e ⫽300 K enters an annular duct of inner radius
merical accuracy, computational time, and computer memory for r i ⫽0.01 m, outer radius r o ⫽0.02 m, and length L⫽3.6 m. The
the inverse analysis. To validate the prediction of the model, mean velocity ū, the total experimental time t f , and the reference
simulated measured temperature data are used as input for the heat flux q ref are taken as 0.2 m/s, 18 s, and 100 W/m2, respec-
estimation of the inner wall heat fluxes. Comparisons between the tively. If 41 measurement points are taken both in 0⭐ ␰ ⭐1 and
estimated and exact values of the inner wall heat fluxes are made 0⭐ ␶ ⭐1, it corresponds to a sensor spacing of ⌬x⫽0.09 m and a
in the paper. The estimation of the wall heat flux from the simu- sampling rate of ⌬t⫽0.45 s. The actual temperature errors are
lated measured temperature data with no measurement errors, i.e., ⫾0.55°C and ⫾1.1°C for ␴⫽0.01 and ␴⫽0.02, respectively.
␴ ⫽0 is examined first. As a result, the estimated solutions con- These values are larger than the typical value for thermocouple
verge graphically to the exact values of the wall heat fluxes. measurement error, i.e., ⫾0.25°C. Figure 4 is intended to illustrate
In the first example, the spatial and timewise variations of the the effects of the numbers of the measurement points M and N on
unknown wall heat flux are considered to be sinusoidal functions the accuracy of the estimation. In this case, M and N are both
taken as 21. Comparing Fig. 4 with Fig. 2, it is noted that increas-
Q 共 ␰ , ␶ 兲 ⫽10 Sin共 ␲␰ 兲 Sin共 ␲ ␶ 兲 . (13) ing the measurement points from 21⫻21 to 41⫻41 improves the
Figures 2 and 3 show the exact and estimated results of the inner accuracy significantly. The measurement errors trend to become
wall heat flux at ␶⫽0.2, ␶⫽0.5, and ␶⫽0.9 for simulated experi- more correlated as the sampling rate increases and the distance
mental data containing errors of standard deviation ␴ ⫽0.01 and between the sensors decreases 共关1兴兲. Very high correlation be-
tween measurement data provides less information for the inverse
Fig. 2 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.01, Fig. 4 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.01,
M Ä41, N Ä41 M Ä21, N Ä21
Fig. 7 The sensitivity coefficient ⵲ ␪ „ ␰ ,0.5,␶ …Õ ⵲ Q 2,2 used in the
inverse analysis when the measurements are taken at ␩ Ä0.5
Fig. 5 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.01
再
and ␴ Ä0.02, M Ä41, N Ä41
20␰ Sin共 ␲ ␶ 兲 0⭐ ␰ ⭐0.5
Q共 ␰,␶ 兲⫽ . (15)
20共 1⫺ ␰ 兲 Sin共 ␲ ␶ 兲 0.5⭐ ␰ ⭐1
analysis. The computational time and memory also increase under Figure 8 shows the estimation of the spatial variation of the wall
such circumstances. As a result, 41⫻41 measurement points are heat flux at ␶ ⫽0.2, ␶ ⫽0.5, and ␶ ⫽0.9 for simulated experimental
used for all of the results presented in this paper except in Fig. 4. data with ␴ ⫽0.01 and ␴ ⫽0.02, respectively. Overall, it can be
In the second example, the wall heat flux with a triangular seen that the estimation of the wall heat flux is satisfactory. As
timewise variation and sinusoidal spatial variation is considered, expected, the prediction of the wall heat flux is less accurate near
再
␰ ⫽0.5.
20␶ Sin共 ␲␰ 兲 0⭐ ␶ ⭐0.5 In the final example, the unknown wall heat flux is assumed to
Q共 ␰,␶ 兲⫽ . (14)
再
20共 1⫺ ␶ 兲 Sin共 ␲␰ 兲 0.5⭐ ␶ ⭐1 vary in the form
The inverse solutions at ␰ ⫽0.2, ␰ ⫽0.5, and ␰ ⫽0.9 are shown in
Fig. 5 from the measured temperature data. The agreement be- 30␶ Cos 冉冊
␲
2
␰ 0⭐ ␶ ⭐0.5
冉冊
tween the estimated and the exact values of the wall heat flux is Q共 ␰,␶ 兲⫽ (16)
satisfactory for both ␴⫽0.01 and ␴⫽0.02. The prediction of the ␲
20共 1⫺ ␶ 兲 Cos ␰ 0.5⬍ ␶ ⭐1
wall heat flux is less accurate near ␶⫽0.5 because the wall heat 2
flux is not smooth there. The inverse solutions when the measure-
which is difficult to predict for the inverse analysis due to the
ments are taken inside the fluid are also examined. Figures 6 and
discontinuity presents in the function. Figure 9 shows the exact
7 show the sensitivity coefficient ⳵ ␪ ( ␰ , ␩ , ␶ )/ ⳵ Q 2,2 at different
and estimated results of the inner wall heat flux at ␰ ⫽0.2, ␰
sensor locations, i.e., ␩⫽1 and ␩⫽0.5, respectively. The magni-
⫽0.5, and ␰ ⫽0.9 for simulated experimental data containing er-
tude of the sensitivity coefficient increases as the distance be-
rors of standard deviation ␴ ⫽0.02. The prediction is less accurate
tween the inner wall and the sensors decreases. As expected, it is
near ␶ ⫽0.5 where the wall heat flux is not continuous. The accu-
shown that the accuracy of the estimation can be improved sig-
racy of the estimation can be improved if the sensors are located
nificantly when the sensors are located close to the inner wall.
closer to the inner wall or the measurement errors are reduced. In
However, from the experimental point of view, it is desirable to
this paper, the sensitivity problem can be solved once for given M
avoid sensors within the fluid, which will disturb the flow field
and N. The CPU time required for the sensitivity problem with
and introduce errors.
M ⫽41 and N⫽41 is 11 minutes on a personal computer with an
In the third example, the unknown wall heat flux is assumed to
be a function with a sinusoidal timewise variation and triangular
spatial variation
Fig. 6 The sensitivity coefficient ⵲ ␪ „ ␰ ,1,␶ …Õ ⵲ Q 2,2 used in the Fig. 8 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.01
inverse analysis when the measurements are taken at ␩ Ä1 and ␴ Ä0.02, M Ä41, N Ä41
k ⫽ thermal conductivity
M ⫽ the number of the measured data in the ␰-direction
N ⫽ the number of the measured data in the ␶-direction
Pe ⫽ Pelect number
Q ⫽ dimensionless wall heat flux
q ⫽ wall heat flux
q ref ⫽ reference heat flux
r ⫽ radial coordinate
T ⫽ temperature
t ⫽ time
U ⫽ dimensionless velocity
u ⫽ velocity
ū ⫽ mean velocity
x ⫽ axial coordinate
Z ⫽ measured temperature data
␣ ⫽ thermal diffusivity
␤ ⫽ step size
␩ ⫽ dimensionless radial coordinate
Fig. 9 The exact and estimated wall heat fluxes for ␴ Ä0.02, ␭ ⫽ radius ratio
M Ä41, N Ä41 ␥ ⫽ conjugate coefficient
␪ ⫽ dimensionless temperature
␴ ⫽ standard deviation
Intel Pentium II 233 MHz processor. If the sensitivity coefficients ␶ ⫽ dimensionless time
are given as input, the computational time required for each case ␰ ⫽ dimensionless axial coordinate
of the inverse problem varies from 8 to 105 seconds. ␨ ⫽ random variable
Conclusion
An inverse convection method for estimating the inner wall References
heat flux for unsteady laminar forced convection in an annular 关1兴 Beck, J. V., Blackwell, B., and Clair, C. R. St., Jr., 1985, Inverse Heat Con-
duct has been presented. The unknown wall heat flux is a function duction: Ill-Posed Problems, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
of time and space. No prior information is needed for the func- 关2兴 Alifanov, O. M., 1994, Inverse Heat Transfer Problems, Springer-Verlag, New
York.
tional form of the wall heat flux in the inverse analysis. Different 关3兴 Raghunath, R., 1993, ‘‘Determining Entrance Conditions From Downstream
timewise and spatial variations of the wall heat fluxes are used to Measurements,’’ Int. Commun. Heat Mass Transfer, 20, pp. 173–183.
illustrate the accuracy of the method. The reconstruction of the 关4兴 Bokar, J. C., and Ozisik, M. N., 1995, ‘‘An Inverse Analysis for Estimating the
wall heat flux is satisfactory when simulated exact or noisy data Time-Varying Inlet Temperature in Laminar Flow Inside a Parallel Plate
Duct,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 38, pp. 39–45.
are input to the inverse analysis. As expected, the prediction of the 关5兴 Liu, F. B., and Ozisik, M. N., 1996, ‘‘Estimation of Inlet Temperature Profile
wall heat flux is less accurate if the estimated function is not in Laminar Duct Flow,’’ Inv. Probl. Eng., 3, pp. 131–143.
smooth. 关6兴 Moutsoglou, A., 1990, ‘‘Solution of an Elliptic Inverse Convection Problem
Using a Whole Domain Regularization Technique,’’ J. Thermophys. Heat
Transfer, 4, pp. 341–349.
Acknowledgment 关7兴 Huang, C. H., and Ozisik, M. N., 1992, ‘‘Inverse Problem of Determining
Unknown Wall Heat Flux in Laminar Flow Through a Parallel Plate Duct,’’
The support of this work by the National Science Council of the Numer. Heat Transfer, Part A, 21, pp. 55–70.
Republic of China under Contract No. NSC 88-2212-E-211-003 is 关8兴 Liu, F. B., and Ozisik, M. N., 1996, ‘‘Inverse Analysis of Transient Turbulent
gratefully acknowledged. Forced Convection Inside Parallel-Plate Ducts,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 39,
pp. 2615–2618.
关9兴 Patankar, S. V., 1980, Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, Hemisphere,
Nomenclature Washington, DC.
关10兴 Hestenes, M. R., 1980, Conjugate Direction Methods in Optimization,
D h ⫽ hydraulic diameter Springer-Verlag, New York.
d ⫽ direction of descent 关11兴 Alifanov, O. M., 1974, ‘‘Solution of an Inverse Problem of Heat Conduction
J ⫽ objective function by Iteration Methods,’’ J. Eng. Phys., 26, pp. 471–476.
Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop
of Laminar Flow in Horizontal
S.-S. Hsieh Tubes With/Without Longitudinal
Sun Yat-Sen Professor of Mechanical
Engineering,
Dean of Engineering,
Inserts
Fellow ASME
Heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of water flow in horizontal tubes with/
without longitudinal inserts used as a heat exchanger tubing was experimentally studied.
I.-W. Huang Testing was performed on bare tubes and tubes with square and rectangular as well as
Graduate Student,
crossed-strip inserts with aspect ratios AR ⫽ 1 and 4 and varied ratios of inlet mixed
Department of Mechanical Engineering
mean temperature to wall temperature of 0.88 to 0.97. The Reynolds number ranged from
approximately 250 to 1750 for flow visualization and from 1700 to 4000 for the pressure
National Sun Yat-Sen University,
drop and heat transfer measurements. Flow visualization, using a dye injection method,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan R.O.C.
revealed a highly complex flow pattern including a secondary flow formed in the cross
section for crossed-strip inserts. The thermal entrance length was found and correlated in
terms of Re for this type of inserted tubes. The enhancement of heat transfer as compared
to a conventional bare tube at the same Reynolds number based on the hydraulic diameter
was found to be about a factor of 16 at Re⭐4000, while the friction factor rise was only
about a factor of 4.5 at Re⭐4000. 关S0022-1481共00兲01303-7兴
Keywords: Augmentation, Forced Convection, Heat Exchangers, Heat Transfer
1 Introduction The purpose of the present work is to extend the previous stud-
ies 共关5,6兴兲 for turbulent flow to the developing laminar tube flow
The efficiency and economic competitiveness of many industry and heat transfer with strip type inserts. The geometry and dimen-
processes depend, to a great extent, on the performance of heat sions of the inserts used in this study are shown in Fig. 1. These
exchangers. Consequently, there is considerable engineering effort inserts were chosen to simulate the applications in waste heat
directed toward the development of high performance heat ex- recovery system as a recuperator. The inserts were made from
changers. Improvement in performance may result in a heat ex- Plexiglas and considered to be adiabatic. The Reynolds number
changer of a smaller size. For a heat exchanger of a fixed size, range of the experiments was from 250 to 4000 and the Prandtl
improved performance may allow for either an increased heat number for the heat transfer study was extended from 2.4 to 4.6.
transfer rate or a decrease in temperature difference between the The geometric size 共e.g., H and L兲 as well as operating condition
process fluids, the latter allowing for more efficient utilization of 共e.g., developing flow and developed flow兲 is totally different
from those of Solanki et al. 关1,2兴 and Chen and Hsieh 关3兴.
thermodynamic availability.
As a practically used displaceable device, a longitudinal rectan-
gular plate is often inserted in the tubes of heat exchangers to 2 Experimental Setup and Procedure
enhance tube-side heat transfer. Solanki et al. 关1,2兴 conducted ex-
Figure 2 shows a schematic drawing of the experimental appa-
perimental and theoretical studies for laminar forced convection in
ratus. There are two test systems; one is for flow visualization,
tubes with polygon inner cores. Chen and Hsieh 关3兴 numerically and one is for pressure drop and heat transfer measurements. This
studied laminar mixed convection in a horizontal tube with a lon- means two different, but complementary, apparatuses were em-
gitudinal square core. ployed for the present experiments.
Most studies have been concerned with fully developed condi-
tions. However, it was unclear how the flow develops to the final 2.1 Flow Visualization. The experimental setup used an
available constant-head reservoir 共12-m height兲 containing about
states for laminar or turbulent convection in a horizontal tube,
3000 L of city water that was supplied with water through an inlet
especially with a longitudinal strip in its core. The developing at the bottom 共see Fig. 2 for details兲. An overflow control valve
process would not only provide insight into the complicated phys- maintained a constant head in the tank. The water from the outlet
ics involved, but also legitimize the fully developed solution. Re- passed through a flowmeter first and then to a transparent Plexi-
cently, Hsieh and Wen 关4兴 did a numerical study for laminar de- glas tube 共14-mm dia. with 2 mm in thickness兲, where the actual
veloping flow in a horizontal tube with strip-type inserts. Further, experimentation was carried out. The flow in the tube, and there-
Wu 关5兴 and Liu 关6兴 reported experimentally a two-part study for fore the Reynolds number, was measured by a rotameter.
turbulent air flow in a horizontal tube with longitudinal inserts. Longitudinal strips were inserted into the transparent tube. The
However, the literature on experimental studies dealing with de- strips were also made from Plexiglas as shown in Fig. 1. All
veloping laminar convection tube flow with a longitudinal insert is inserts were closely bonded to the tube to insure a tight ‘‘spill-
over’’ proof seal 共i.e., no leak兲. The visualization of the flow
relatively scarce.
patterns was aided by injection of colored 共blue兲 dye into the tube.
The dyes were introduced through the upstream plenum and
ejected from a tube of 1-mm dia. hypodermic tubes right at the
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Jan. 8, 1999; water inlet with great care to keep the disturbance due to the dye
revision received, Dec. 14, 1999. Associate Technical Editor: J. Han. to minimum. Formulations of this type resist breakup under highly
Fig. 1 The geometry and dimensions of the inserts used in this study
turbulent conditions 共关7兴兲. This was done to identify the different circular tube, special treatment 共e.g., using concave/or convex
types of flow that might exist near the wall and the insert. The lens兲 was made to avoid this effect. The experiments were carried
dyes facilitated observation of the behavior of different layers of out several times to verify satisfactory repeatability of flow pat-
fluid. Table 1 gives the geometric parameters and operating ranges terns. The lighting was provided by one LPL-BROM CINE 500W
that were used for flow visualization. Due to the refraction of the floodlight. The still pictures were taken using Cannon-AE1 cam-
Fig. 2 The schematic of the present experimental apparatus
Table 1 Geometric parameters and operating ranges for flow outlet pressures were measured with a piezoresistive-type trans-
visualization study ducer, respectively, and differential pressure at a 100-mm interval
each across the channel is measured with a strain-gauge-type
transducer. The test section is formed by the tubes with and with-
out inserts. Unlike flow visualization tests, the inserts here were
fabricated from copper plate 3000-mm 共⫾0.5-mm兲 long. In ma-
chining, care was taken to achieve a hydrodynamically smooth
surface finish on the inserts. The side view of the test section
shows the assembled relative positions of the front and end tubes
which form the test duct. As seen in Fig. 3 the inserts were posi-
tioned in such a way that the upstream and downstream plenums
were properly flanged by the adjustment screws. The entering
flow was calmed by the baffles in the upstream plenum before it
entered the duct. An assembled view of the joining of the respec-
tive inlet and exit ends of the test section was shown in Fig. 3.
Table 2 lists the geometric parameters and operating range used in
heat transfer and pressure drop measurements.
The test tube includes a heating part that has a double-tube
structure and is between the tube exit and 3000 mm upstream
from the exit. The inner tube of the heating part which is the test
tube of D⫽14 mm is made of 1-mm-thick copper plate. A car-
tridge heater was composed of four heating elements and was
filled into the gap between the inner and outer tube which results
in that the air existing in the gap between inner and outer tube was
era with an exposure time of 1/4000⬃1/500 s with ISO 400 East- preheated and a constant heat flux condition was reached eventu-
man Kodak 35-mm color slide films. In fact, good flow visualiza- ally. The wire 共1.8-mm gauge兲 chosen as a heating element was
tion images are obtained from the contrast between fluid with and made of a nickel-chrome alloy. The heating element is 6.83 mm in
without the dye. diameter. A detail of the manifolds that illustrates the heating
element is also shown in Fig. 3. The test inserts were inserted into
2.2 Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer Measurements. the test tube. The test tube had a fitting added to each end for
The experiments for determining heat transfer coefficients and attachment. The locations of the thermocouples 共total 84 thermo-
friction factor for water flowing in a horizontal duct is shown in couples兲 used to measure the test section wall temperature distri-
Fig. 2. The duct was made of 14 mm 共⫾0.1-mm兲 dia. with a butions as well as flowing water temperature inside the tube at
2-mm thick copper tube. Heat transfer and pressure drop tests particular positions along downstream distance are positioned as
were done independently. Both used water as the working fluid. the same as Liu 关6兴. Temperatures measured at these locations
The pressure drop experiments were done adiabatically. Inlet and provided experimental confirmation of the establishment of fully
Fig. 3 Test section details
Table 2 Experimental parameters and operating ranges
developed flow. Fine gauge 共⬵0.1 mm兲 specially calibrated Type viscosity and the Prandtl number of the water, which are strongly
K type thermocouples were employed with the intent of minimiz- temperature dependent, as stated before, were evaluated at the
ing the disturbance of the temperature field in the vicinity of the average bulk temperature.
thermocouple junctions. The thermocouples were installed in The tube side local heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number
holes drilled into the back side of the tube walls to within 2 mm of due to pure forced convection were calculated as
the surface. Five thermocouples, respectively, positioned just up-
stream and downstream of the tube inlet and outlet were used to Q net⫽h x A s 共 T wx ⫺T bx 兲
measure the temperature at respective positions incorporated with
the corresponding velocity measurements to calculate the inlet and q ⬙ ⫽Q net /A s , A s⫽ ␲ D ol (1)
outlet bulk mean temperatures.
Electric power was supplied to the test section heating wire by h xD i
Nux ⫽
one circuit. The source of power for this circuit was an autotrans- kf
former, supplied from a standard 220V, 60-cycle a.c. wall outlet.
These autotransformers were designed for a load voltage output of where k f is the thermal conductivity of water and A s is the area of
0–220 V, with a maximum current of 40 amps. the heated region of the water tubes (⫽ ␲ D o l). The local net heat
Water flow rates were measured by rotameter 共0.5⬃3 L/min兲. transfer rate Q net was the electrical power generated from the
This gives the tube-side Reynolds number range from 1700 to heater with the heat loss to the outside of the test channel de-
4000. The pressure drop along the entire test section was mea- ducted 共including conduction and radiation heat losses兲. The sum
sured by means of static manometers. In all, five taps were sta- of these two losses was found to be less than ten percent of the
tioned 100 mm apart. The pressure taps were connected by flex- total heat input at the worst case.
ible PVC tubing to the monometer. All measurements were made Buoyancy effect was considered negligible since the water was
under steady-state conditions. The fluid properties were calculated used as the working fluid. Actually, the Richardson number
as the average between the inlet and outlet bulk temperature. Gen- (Gr/Re2) was computed for the worst case 共Re⫽1700,
erally, it took 1.5 hours to reach steady state at Re⫽1700. Q net⫽3429 W with strip type insert of AR⫽1兲 and it was found to
After the establishment of an overflow from the constant head be about 0.1. T wx was calculated based on the average of several
tank and filling the plenum chambers, the flow control valve was circumferential 共four for LS inserts; six for CS inserts兲 tempera-
opened to the maximum flow rate in order to wash any air bubbles ture readings.
or pockets out of the test duct which may have formed while the T bx is obtained by energy balance at any streamwise tube loca-
system was at rest. The flow control valve was then adjusted to tion, defined as T bx ⫽T bi ⫹q w⬙ ( ␲ D⌬X/ṁC p ) where ⌬X is the
the desired flow rate for the run as measured by the rotameter. The stream distance from the beginning of heating for the streamwise
inlet bulk temperature was then measured and recorded. Next, station of interest, ṁ is the water mass flow rate and C p is water
heating was initiated by the adjustment of the autotransformers to specific heat. The effect of the inserts acted as fins only when the
predetermined voltage outputs. Data acquisition began after width of the insert is close to the inside diameter. However, such
steady state operation was achieved. effect as the modifying the temperature of the water in the tube
was considered negligible 共关8兴兲 especially for that the Plexiglas
insert was chosen.
The determination of fully developed Nusselt numbers from the
3 Data Reduction experimental data begins with the calculation of the local bulk
The primary goal of this experiment was to determine the pos- temperature rise based on an energy balance on the flowing water.
sible flow pattern and fully developed Nusselt numbers for water The calculated and measured local water bulk mean temperatures
flowing in tubes with and without inserts. The independent param- at a particular downstream distance from the inlet was found to be
eters for heat transfer measurement were the Reynolds number, in good agreement within ⫾5 percent. The present results con-
the Prandtl number and the ratio of inlet mixed mean temperature sisted of 108 data sets obtained from four different tubes.
to wall temperature while for flow visualization the independent The Darcy friction factor was evaluated using the pressure drop
parameters were Reynolds number and downstream position. The in conjunction with the following equation:
Fig. 4 Visualized flow pattern for LS insert of AR Ä1 at x Õ D Ä50 for different Re
共 ⌬ P/l 兲 D 1 traced to the uncertainty in the convective heat transfer and is due
f⫽ (2) mainly to the simplified analysis for the conduction loss correc-
1 2
␳u tion. Although the conduction loss through the insert can probably
2 m be estimated to be within two to three percent accuracy, these
where u m is nominal 共bulk兲 average velocity of the fluid, l is the losses are so small that this might be considered negligible. The
length of the test tube, and ␳ is the density of the fluid. estimated error in the temperature difference is 0.2°C. The result-
ing maximum uncertainty in Nu is six percent.
4 Experimental Uncertainty
Before the experiments, all the thermocouples were calibrated
in a constant temperature bath to ensure the measurement accu- 5 Results and Discussion
racy of ⫾0.1°C. The voltage input to each finned-type heater was
measured with a sensitivity of ⫾0.5 mV and an accuracy of ⫾0.5 5.1 Flow Visualization. Flow visualization was conducted
percent. Several runs were conducted in which the voltage and the at a particular position chosen in such a way that a hydrodynami-
current for the circuit were measured, and the calculated power cally fully developed condition was reached to deduce the main
output was highly stable. This procedure resulted in a maximum flow features and to observe the influence of the insert geometry
uncertainty of ⫾1 percent for the calculated power output. The on the flow pattern. There are small separation zones near the
thermophysical properties of the water were assigned an uncer- fronts of the sides of the inserts but we don’t think it would affect
tainty of ⫾1 percent. This was based on the latest values evalu- the downstream flow at each corresponding fully developed re-
ated at proper temperature and pressure. gion much. Although the visual results depend on where ink was
An error analysis using the method of Moffat 关9兴 was per- injected, typical photographic sequences are obtained and shown
formed to determine the uncertainty in the experimental data. The in Figs. 4 to 6. The corresponding sketches are shown in Fig. 7.
single largest contributor to uncertainty in the Reynolds number The following inferences on the effects of the insert geometry and
共1700 to 4000兲 was the measurement of the volumetric flow rate. Re can be drawn form these figures.
The resulting maximum uncertainty in Re and f is 4.9 and 5.3 1 At low Re, the traditional ‘‘laminate’’ type flow pattern is
percent, respectively. The majority of the error in Nu can be clearly seen 共Figs. 4, 5, and 6兲.
2 Slight differences in the patterns evolve as the flow moves parently, these vortices were stretched by a velocity gradient in
downstream, but the major changes occur from one geometry to the main flow and advected downstream 共see, for example, Fig. 6
another and with Re as well 共Figs. 4, 5, and 6兲. at Re⫽750兲. It is conjectured 共关4兴兲 that Fig. 4 basically shows two
3 As Re increases, the onset of transition to turbulence occurs pairs of symmetric vortex cells inside the cross section for the LS
followed by the sequence of LS (AR⫽1), CS (AR⫽4), and LS insert of AR⫽1. This is perhaps because a secondary flow was
(AR⫽4) insert 共Figs. 4, 5, and 6兲. formed and was due to the complex interaction among shear
4 Dye injection tests conducted in a bare tube 共not shown here兲 forces and the geometry of the insert. The similar situation was
indicated the presence of laminar flow well up to Re⫽2300 which also found in Figs. 5 and 6 at low Re共⭐500兲. However, it seems
is larger than the present worst case of Re⫽1750 for LS insert of
that the flow becomes more irregular and chaotic at Re⭓750. It
AR⫽4 共Fig. 5兲.
5 Tests at Re⬎1250 for LS insert of AR⫽4 result in high also seems that, however, the turbulence intensity shown in Fig. 5
enough turbulence that the dyes are thoroughly mixed. It also is much higher than the one shown in Fig. 4 for LS insert of
suggests that both rotational and crossover patterns exist in flow AR⫽1 due to the presence of more irregular motions in Fig. 5
over a strip-type insert 共Figs. 5 and 6兲 which result in a helical- with AR⫽4. This is perhaps due to a higher corresponding Re in
like motion of the fluid. The reasons for this are not understood at Fig. 5. But, most importantly, it indicates that the LS insert with
this stage. Since no further attempt has as yet been made in this AR⫽4 seems to have stronger local turbulence compared with the
work to visualize or to otherwise study the characteristics of the other two inserted tubes, i.e., CS (AR⫽4) and LS (AR⫽1). Ac-
flow past an insert in an open literature, it may provide some tually, the main flow in tubes with LS insert of AR⫽4 has a
physical insight in this regard even under present situation. The higher spatially averaged velocity, which results in a higher heat
flow patterns viewed on different sides of the inserts are not same transfer. This can also been seen later.
and not symmetric with respect to the tube centerline. These are In summary, the present complex flow pattern in the inserted
expected and may be caused by experimental errors. tubes can be possibly attributed to a drag on the disruption due to
In general, based on the present side view, these flow patterns possible vortex cell formation in cross section and an increase in
imply that there are symmetric cells. Also, as Re increases, it turbulent intensity caused by the shear layer 共also different mean
seems that the strength of symmetric vortices was enhanced. Ap- velocities in the passages around the inserts兲.
5.2 Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer Measurements From Fig. 8, one can see that the bare tube has the largest
temperature difference followed by LS (AR⫽4), CS (AR⫽4),
5.2.1 Temperature Distribution and Nusselt Numbers. Tem-
and LS (AR⫽1). This is the same as reported by Liu 关6兴 for
perature distribution along streamwise distance was measured and
turbulent air flow. Keeping the other parameters fixed, the small-
a representative dimensionless temperature distribution 共Re
est temperature difference in Fig. 8 indicates the best heat transfer
⫽2300, Q net⫽3429 W, and q w ⫽22860W/m2 兲 plot is shown in
performance one may obtain. This is partly because the LS insert
Fig. 8. In this figure, the ordinate variable is the nondimensional-
with AR⫽1 provides a larger heat transfer area and partly be-
ized temperature difference T * , defined as T⫺T bi /Q net /lk f . The
cause LS inserts with AR⫽1 have a higher convective heat trans-
abscissa variable in Fig. 8 is known as the inverse Graetz number
and is a dimensionless representation of the linear axial fer due to higher average velocity. In fact, the ratios of surface
coordinate. area of the tubes with and without inserts are 1.94 for LS (AR
For the longitudinally constant heat flux boundary condition of ⫽1), 2.3 for CS (AR⫽4), and 1.8 for LS (AR⫽4), respectively.
the present study as evidenced by this figure, the thermally fully The increase in heat transfer coefficient due to heat transfer area is
developed region is characterized by wall and mean bulk water counterbalanced by the lower heat transport capability due to a
temperature that increased linearly as a function of longitudinal lower average velocity for CS insert as compared to the LS in-
downstream position. The most important portion of the wall tem- serts. At this stage, the heat transfer increases with a insert for a
perature distribution is the central portion 共x * ⭓4⫻10⫺3 for all variety reasons. The blockage of the flow due to the presence of
the cases considered兲 through which a straight line has been fitted the insert increases the flow velocity. The cross flow patterns of
parallel to the line representing the bulk temperature. The vertical the fluid 共based on flow visualization兲 by the presence of the insert
distance between this line segment and the bulk temperature line improves the mixing.
indicates the wall-to-bulk temperature difference used to calculate Figure 9 shows the local Nu along the downstream distance and
the fully developed heat transfer coefficient. The entrance effect the onset of the fully developed Nusselt number value plot, rang-
on heat transfer enhancement can also be explained by such dif- ing from 42D to 100D, depending on the tube inside geometry. A
ference and it was also clearly noted especially for tubes with fully developed value 共i.e., thermal entrance length, L e 兲 was de-
inserts. termined when the variation of two consecutive Nux was less than
Fig. 7 Accompanying sketches of the corresponding plots
one percent. The sequence is that the CS insert with AR⫽4 has
the earliest incipience of fully developed value followed by LS The values for constant C and exponent m are tabulated in
(AR⫽1), LS (AR⫽4), and the bare tube. The fdp value of each Table 3. Within ⫾8 percent accuracy, one obtains m⫽0.2993
tube is correlated in terms of Re in the form ⫾0.048. This suggests that Reynolds number dependence on ther-
mal entrance length is not altered for all the four cases under
Le
⫽C 共 Re兲 m . (3) consideration.
D The fully developed Nusselt numbers are plotted against Re in
Fig. 10. The effect of insert on Nu is shown in Fig. 10. The
Fig. 10 Nusselt numbers versus Re. Reference cited in figure
Fig. 8 Local dimensionless wall and bulk temperature distri-
is Ref. †12‡.
bution at Q netÄ3429 W and q w À22,860 WÕm2
corresponding bare tube values are also plotted for reference. It

should be noted that the fluid Prandtl number changed along the
tube; therefore, the left ordinate was so chosen as Nu/Pr0.4. How-
ever, the effect of Prandtl number was not considered because the
change of Pr seems not big. In fact, the value of ␮ b / ␮ w is around
1.01 to 1.10 in the present work. Figure 10 shows that slope of the
Nu/Pr0.4 versus Re graph is almost constant even at the low Re
共Re⬇1000兲 end, indicating a departure from laminar behavior at
these low Re values. Incorporating with the data from Liu 关6兴
there is a transition region 共4000⭐Re⭐6500兲 as would be ex-
pected for the bare tube, except for the tubes with LS inserts of
AR⫽1. Transition from laminar to turbulent flow occurred at
lower Reynolds number 共e.g., Re⬇3600 for the LS insert of AR
⫽1兲 than for the bare tube 共Re⬇4000兲. The increase in Nusselt
number 共compared to that of bare tube兲 of up to 16 is possible in
the low Re region 共Re⬇4000兲 by using the inserted tubes; how-
ever, this value goes down to 2.3 or so in the turbulent regime
共Re⬇19,500兲. The highest enhancement levels in the Nusselt
number over bare tube values are noted in the laminar regime.
This behavior is expected because, as stated earlier, in the flow
visualization for laminar flow, the dominant thermal resistance is
not limited to a thin boundary layer adjacent to the flow. Conse-
quently, the present insert geometry mixing the gross flow is more
Fig. 9 Nux versus x Õ D
Table 3 Constants for thermal entrance length correlation L e Õ D Ä c Rem
Fig. 11 Friction factor results for the case of smooth tube
effective in laminar flow than in turbulent flow. Moreover, good

agreement with the predictions of the Petukhov correlation can be
seen for testing 共data from 关6兴兲 in the Reynolds number range of
Fig. 12 Friction factor f and ratio f Õ f b
6500 to 19,500 for the bare tubes without inserts.
5.2.2 Pressure Drop (Friction Factor). Figure 11 shows the
isothermal friction factor calculated from the pressure drop mea-
surements. Data on bare tubes with different Re are also presented sponding Re read from the top abscissa兲, respectively. In Fig. 12
in Fig. 11. The present measured values and values obtained from for tubes with inserts, the curves for f with inserts are almost
Hsieh and Wu 关5兴 are presented for 6500⭐Re⭐19,500. For the parallel to the corresponding f without inserts in the high range Re
laminar regime, the correlation developed by Moody 关10兴 was 共Re⬎4000兲. At Re⬍4000, the slope undergoes an abrupt transi-
used as a reference. As can be seen from the figure, the results tion representing a change in the flow characteristics.
agree well with the prediction of 64/Re for laminar flow. For the Among three tubes with inserts, it is found that the trend shown
turbulent regime, the correlation developed by McAdams 关11兴 in tubes with CS insert of AR⫽4 seems much like the corre-
was used 共0.184 Re⫺0.2兲. Transition occurs in bare tubes between sponding f curve. However, the other two curves of tubes with LS
2000 and 4000. It is found in Fig. 11 that there is good agreement (AR⫽1) and LS (AR⫽4) show different slopes.
between the bare tube friction factors presently obtained and the The transition Re value is lower 共2000⭐Re⭐2500兲 than the
corresponding values in the literature. value expected for a bare tube 共2300⭐Re⭐4000兲. This change is
Typical results for the friction factors in the tube with inserts, also clearly reflected in the friction factor increase plot. The in-
the corresponding bare tube values, and the ratio of the two are crease in the low Re range is about 1.5⬃3.0 times the bare tube
presented in Fig. 12. In Fig. 12 the ordinates on left and right sides value. Moreover, the differences for three tubes with inserts in the
refer to the friction factor, and friction factor increase 共the corre- friction factor at Re⬎4000 could not be distinguished.
Fig. 13 Correlation of Nusselt number „with bare tube… and friction factor „without bare tube…
for inserted tubes in the present study
5.3 Correlations of the Relevant Parameters. It is evident 4 a general correlation of Re, D/D i , and AR on f and Nu was
from Figs. 10 and 12 that the friction factor and the Nusselt num- developed for tubes with inserts.
ber for the tubes with inserts is a function of Re and the geometric
parameters of the insert. Therefore, the f and tube average Nu can Acknowledgment
be correlated in Fig. 13 using the following relationship: This work was supported by a research grant 共NSC 88-2212-
f ⫽49.96 Re⫺0.44共 D/D i 兲 1.18共 AR 兲 ⫺1.53 E110-039兲 from the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C.
and References
⫺0.74
Nu⫽1.233共Gz) 共␮b /␮w兲
0.38
共 D/D i 兲
0.14
共 AR⫹1 兲 0.41
. 关1兴 Solanki, S.-C., Saini, J.-S., and Gupta, C.-P., 1985, ‘‘An Experimental Inves-
tigation of Fully Developed Laminar Flow in a Non-Circular Annulus,’’
The correlation was derived using standard procedures. The es- Eighth National Conference on Heat Mass Transfer, HMTA 34-85, Visakha-
pect ratio effect on f and Nu is clearly noted. Since the conven- patram.
关2兴 Solanki, S.-C., Prekash, S., Saini, J.-S., and Gupta, C.-P., 1987, ‘‘Forced Con-
tional f ⫽64/Re for bare tube is very known, the f correlation does vection Heat Transfer in Doubly Connected Ducts,’’ Int. J. Heat Fluid Flow, 8,
not include the tubes without inserts. Although the range of pp. 107–110.
␮ b / ␮ w of the present study was limited as mentioned before, its 关3兴 Chen, J.-D., and Hsieh, S.-S., 1991, ‘‘Assessment Study of Longitudinal Rect-
effect is well known 共assuming 0.14 as exponent兲 and is, there- angular Plate Inserts as Tubeside Heat Transfer Augmentative Device,’’ Int. J.
Heat Mass Transf., 34, pp. 2545–2553.
fore, included for completeness. The insert effect on both f and Nu 关4兴 Hsieh, S.-S., and Wen, M.-Y., 1996, ‘‘Developing Three-Dimensional Lami-
is also observed based on the exponents of (D/D i ) and AR each. nar Mixed Convection in a Circular Tube Inserted with Longitudinal Strips,’’
6 Conclusions 关5兴 Wu, F.-Y., 1996, ‘‘Turbulent Flow and Pressure Drop in a Horizontal Circular
Tube With Strip-Type Inserts,’’ Masters thesis, Department of Mechanical
The study of flow using three kinds of inserts in a horizontal Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University 共in Chinese兲.
circular tube in the ranges of 250⬍Re⬍4000 and 2.4⭐Pr⭐4.6 has 关6兴 Liu, M.-H., 1996, ‘‘Turbulent Heat Transfer in a Horizontal Circular Tube
With Strip-Type Inserts,’’ MS thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
shown National Sun Yat-Sen University 共in Chinese兲.
关7兴 Hoyt, J. W., and Sellin, R. H. J., 1997, ‘‘Flow Over Tube Banks: A Visual-
1 early or transition to turbulence occurs in the inserted tubes ization Study,’’ ASME J. Fluids Eng., 119, pp. 480–483.
for some cases. 关8兴 Chen, J.-D., and Hsieh, S.-S., 1992, ‘‘Laminar Forced Convection in Circular
2 the complex flow pattern in the inserted tubes is perhaps due Duct Inserted with a Longitudinal Rectangular Plate,’’ AIAA J. Thermophys.
to a drag by vortex formation and an increase in turbulent inten- Heat Transf., 6, pp. 177–179.
关9兴 Moffat, R. J., 1988, ‘‘Describing the Uncertainties in Experimental Results,’’
sity by shear layer in the presence of the insert. Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci., 1, pp. 3–17.
3 heat transfer enhancement can be up to 16 times larger, while 关10兴 Moody, L. F., 1944, ‘‘Friction Factor for Pipe Flow,’’ Trans. ASME, 66, pp.
the friction factor is about 4.5 times larger at the same Reynolds 671–684.
numbers based on hydraulic diameter. This results in that the con- 关11兴 McAdams, W. H., 1954, Heat Transmission, 3rd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New
ventional enhancement level 共␩兲 can reach a value of 4. This is York.
关12兴 Petukhov, B. S., 1970, ‘‘Heat Transfer and Friction in Turbulent Pipe Flow
higher than the corresponding study for turbulent flow which was With Variable Physical Properties,’’ Advances in Heat Transfer, J. P. Hartnett
found to be 2⬃3. and T. F. Irvine, eds., Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 504–564.
Effect of Double Dispersion on
Mixed Convection Heat and Mass
Transfer in Non-Darcy Porous
Medium
P. V. S. N. Murthy1
Department of Mathematics, Similarity solution for the problem of hydrodynamic dispersion in mixed convection heat
I.I.T.–Madras, and mass transfer from vertical surface embedded in porous media has been presented.
Madras 600 036, India The flow induced by the density variations is comparable with the freestream flow. The
heat and mass transfer in the boundary layer region for aiding and opposing buoyancies
in both aiding and opposing flows has been analyzed. The structure of the flow, tempera-
ture, and concentration fields in the Darcy and non-Darcy porous media are governed by
complex interactions among the diffusion rate (Le) and buoyancy ratio (N) in addition to
the flow driving parameter (Ra/Pe). The flow, temperature, and concentration fields are
analyzed and the variation of heat and mass transfer coefficients with the governing
parameters are presented. 关S0022-1481共00兲00703-9兴
Keywords: Boundary Layer, Dispersion, Heat Transfer, Mass Transfer, Mixed Convec-
tion, Porous Media
1 Introduction The porous medium inertial effects have been proved to be

important for moderate and fast flows, i.e., when the pore
Thermal and solutal transport by fluid flowing through a porous
diameter-dependent Reynolds number is greater than the order of
matrix is a phenomenon of great interest from both the theory and
unity. For low-porosity media, the Forchheimer flow model has
application point of view. Heat transfer in the case of homoge-
been proved to be appropriate and it has been widely used in the
neous fluid-saturated porous media has been studied with relation
works of Vafai and Tien 关6,7兴, Whitaker 关8兴, etc. When the iner-
to different applications like dynamics of hot underground
tial effects are prevalent, the thermal and solutal dispersion effects
springs, terrestrial heat flow through aquifer, hot fluid and ignition become important, and these effects are very significant in forced
front displacements in reservoir engineering, heat exchange be- and mixed convection flows and in vigorous natural convection
tween soil and atmosphere, flow of moisture through porous in- flows as well. Thermal dispersion effects have been studied at
dustrial materials, and heat exchanges with fluidized beds. Mass length by researchers such as Bear 关9兴, Kvernvold and Tyvand
transfer in isothermal conditions has been studied with applica- 关10兴, Plumb 关11兴, Hong and Tien 关12兴, Hong et al. 关13兴, Cheng
tions to problems of mixing of fresh and salt water in aquifers, and Vortmeyer 关14兴, Lai and Kulacki 关15兴, Amiri and Vafai 关16兴,
miscible displacements in oil reservoirs, spreading of solutes in Gorla et al. 关17兴, and Murthy and Singh 关18,19兴. A brief review
fluidized beds and crystal washers, salt leaching in soils, etc. Pre- on thermal dispersion can be found in Bear 关9兴 and Nield and
vention of salt dissolution into the lake waters near the sea shores Bejan 关20兴. Kvernvold and Tyvand 关10兴 argued that better agree-
has become a serious problem of research. ment between the theoretical prediction and experimental data can
Coupled heat and mass transfer phenomenon in porous media is be obtained when thermal dispersion effects are taken into con-
gaining attention due to its interesting applications. The flow phe- sideration appropriately.
nomenon is relatively complex rather than that of the pure thermal Coupled heat and mass transfer phenomenon in non-Darcy
convection process. Processes involving heat and mass transfer in flows are studied by Karimi-Fard et al. 关21兴 and Murthy and
porous media are often encountered in the chemical industry, in Singh 关3兴. The complexity of the flow increases when higher order
reservoir engineering in connection with thermal recovery pro- effects like thermal and solutal dispersion, wall channeling, and
cess, and in the study of dynamics of hot and salty springs of a porosity variations are considered in the medium. A numerical
sea. Underground spreading of chemical wastes and other pollut- study of double-diffusive free-convection heat and mass transfer
ants, grain storage, evaporation cooling, and solidification are the in a square cavity filled with a porous medium has been done by
few other application areas where the combined thermo-solutal Karimi-Fard et al. 关21兴. A more general flow equation 共Darcy-
natural convection in porous media are observed. Combined heat Forchheimer-Brinkman兲, coupled with energy and concentration
and mass transfer by free convection under boundary layer ap- equations, are solved using a finite volume technique. The inves-
proximations has been studied by Bejan and Khair 关1兴, Lai and tigation showed that the inertial and boundary effects have a pro-
Kulacki 关2兴, and Murthy and Singh 关3兴. Coupled heat and mass found effect on the double-diffusive convection. The study is
transfer by mixed convection in Darcian fluid-saturated porous valid for N⫽1 and it neglected the effect of double dispersion
medium has been analyzed by Lai 关4兴. The free convection heat which is most important in the non-Darcy mixed convection. A
and mass transfer in a porous enclosure has been studied recently similarity solution has been presented in Murthy and Singh 关3兴 for
by Angirasa et al. 关5兴. the free-convection heat and mass transfer in a Forchheimer po-
rous medium.
1
Present address: Department of Mathematics and Humanities, REC Warangal, The effect of solutal and thermal dispersion effects in homoge-
A.P., 506 004, India. E-mail: pvsnm@recw.ernet.in neous and isotropic Darcian porous media has been analyzed by
Dagan 关22兴. A systematic derivation of the governing equations
1999; revision received, January 18, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: C. with various types of approximations used in applications has
Beckermann. been presented. Using scale analysis arguments, Telles and Tre-
visan 关23兴 analyzed the double-dispersion phenomenon in a free- with the boundary conditions
冎
convection boundary layer adjacent to a vertical wall in a Darcian
fluid-saturated porous medium. Depending on the relative magni- y⫽0: v ⫽0, T⫽T w , C⫽C w
. (4)
tude of the dispersion coefficients, four classes of flow were iden- y→⬁: u⫽u ⬁ , T⫽T ⬁ , C⫽C ⬁
tified and the heat and mass transfer has been studied.
In the present paper, the effect of hydrodynamic dispersion on Here x and y are the Cartesian coordinates, u and v are the
mixed convection heat and mass transfer near a vertical surface averaged velocity components in x and y-directions, respectively,
embedded in a porous medium has been analyzed under boundary T is the temperature, C is the concentration, ␤ T is the coefficient
layer approximations using the similarity solution technique. The of thermal expansion, ␤ C is the coefficient of solutal expansion, ␯
mixed convective flow is promoted by the uniform freestream and is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid, K is the permeability, c is
density variations due to the combination of temperature and con- an empirical constant, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and ␣ e
centration gradients. The Forchheimer flow model is considered and D e are the effective thermal and solutal diffusivities, respec-
and the porous medium porosity is assumed to be low so that the tively. The subscripts w and ⬁ indicate the conditions at the wall
boundary effects in the medium may be neglected. The heat and and at the outer edge of the boundary layer, respectively.
mass transfer in the boundary layer region has been analyzed for Following Telles and Trevisan 关23兴, the expressions for ␣ e and
aiding and opposing buoyancies for both the aiding and opposing D e can be written as ␣ e ⫽ ␣ ⫹ ␥ du and D e ⫽D⫹ ␨ du, where ␣
flows. The flow, temperature, and concentration fields in Darcy and D are the molecular thermal and solutal diffusivities, respec-
and non-Darcy porous media are observed to be governed by tively, whereas ␥ du and ␨ du represent dispersion thermal and
complex interactions among the diffusion rate 共Le兲, buoyancy ra- solutal diffusivities, respectively. The above model for thermal
tio 共N兲, and Pe␥ and Pe␨ , the dispersion thermal and solutal dif- dispersion has been used extensively by researchers like Plumb
fusivity parameters, in addition to the flow driving parameter Ra/ 关11兴, Hong et al. 关13兴, Hong and Tien 关12兴, Lai and Kulacki
Pe. Due to dispersion effects, heat transfer is enhanced whereas 关2,15兴, Murthy and Singh 关18,19,24兴 in studies of convective heat
the mass transfer coefficient becomes less predictable. transfer in non-Darcy porous media. For moderate and high Peclet
number flows, a linear variation of the thermal and solutal disper-
sions with velocity has been proved to be reasonable, see, for
2 Governing Equations example, Saffman 关25兴 and Bear 关9兴. Similar representation for
Mixed convection heat and mass transfer from the impermeable solutal dispersion can be seen in Dagan 关22兴.
vertical flat wall in a fluid-saturated porous medium is considered Making use of the following transformation
for the study and the schematic is shown in Fig. 1 共reproduced y ␺ T⫺T ⬁
from Lai 关4兴兲. The x-axis is taken along the plate and y-axis is ␩ ⫽ Pe1/2
x , f 共 ␩ 兲⫽ , ␪共 ␩ 兲⫽ ,
normal to it. The wall is maintained at constant temperature and x ␣ Pe1/2
x T w ⫺T ⬁
concentration, T w and C w , respectively, and these values are as-
C⫺C ⬁
sumed to be greater than the ambient temperature and concentra- ␾共 ␩ 兲⫽ ,
tion, T ⬁ and C ⬁ , respectively. The governing equations for the C w ⫺C ⬁
boundary layer flow, heat, and mass transfer from the wall y⫽0 the governing Eqs. 共1兲–共3兲 become
into the fluid-saturated porous medium x⭓0 and y⬎0 共after mak-
ing use of the Boussinesq approximation兲 are given by Ra
f ⬙ ⫹2F o Pef ⬘ f ⬙ ⫽⫾ 关 ␪ ⬘ ⫹N ␾ ⬘ 兴
冉冊冉冊
(5)
⳵ u c 冑K ⳵ u Kg ␤ T ⳵ T
2
Kg ␤ c ⳵ C Pe
⫹ ⫽ ⫹ (1)
⳵y ␯ ⳵y ␯ ⳵y ␯ ⳵y 1
␪ ⬙⫹ f ␪ ⬘ ⫹Pe␥ 共 f ⬘ ␪ ⬙ ⫹ f ⬙ ␪ ⬘ 兲 ⫽0
冉冊
(6)
⳵T ⳵T ⳵ ⳵T 2
u ⫹v ⫽ ␣e (2)
⳵x ⳵y ⳵y ⳵y Le
冉冊
␾ ⬙⫹ f ␾ ⬘ ⫹LePe␨ 共 f ⬘ ␾ ⬙ ⫹ f ⬙ ␾ ⬘ 兲 ⫽0 (7)
⳵C ⳵C ⳵ ⳵C 2
u ⫹v ⫽ De (3)
⳵x ⳵y ⳵y ⳵y and the boundary conditions 共4兲 transform into
␩ ⫽0:
␩ →⬁:
f ⫽0,
f ⬘ ⫽1,
␪ ⫽1,
␪ ⫽0,
␾ ⫽1
␾ ⫽0
冎 . (8)
The important parameters involved in the present study are the

local Peclet number Pex ⫽U ⬁ x/ ␣ , the local Darcy-Rayleigh num-
ber Rax ⫽Kg ␤ T ␪ w x/ ␣ ␯ , which is defined with reference to the
temperature difference alone, Pe⫽U ⬁ d/ ␣ and Ra
⫽Kg ␤ T ␪ w d/ ␣ ␯ , are the pore diameter-dependent Peclet and
Rayleigh numbers, respectively. The inertial parameter is F o Pe
⫽(c 冑K ␣ /d ␯ )(U ⬁ d/ ␣ )⫽c 冑KU ⬁ / ␯ 共in the present study, F o Pe is
varied as a single parameter兲, the buoyancy ratio is N
⫽ ␤ C ␾ w / ␤ T ␪ w , and the diffusivity ratio is Le⫽ ␣ /D. The Lewis
number is nothing but the ratio of the Schmidt number ( ␯ /D) and
Prandtl number 共␯/␣兲. The flow governing parameter is Ra/Pe and
is independent of x. Ra/Pe⫽0 represents the forced convection
flow. The flow asymptotically reaches the free convection flow
limit as this parameter tends to ⬁. Pe␥ and Pe␨ represent thermal
and solutal dispersion parameters, respectively, and are defined
here as Pe␥ ⫽ ␥ U ⬁ d/ ␣ and Pe␨ ⫽ ␨ U ⬁ d/ ␣ . It is worth mentioning
that the thermal dispersion parameter Pe␥ has been treated as ␥Pe
Fig. 1 Coupled heat and mass transfer by mixed convection in the works of Lai and Kulacki 关26兴 where the coefficients of
from a vertical plate in a saturated porous medium „reproduced thermal dispersion have been assigned values in the range 1/7 to
from Lai †4‡… 1/3. Researchers like Gorla et al. 关17兴, Hong and Tien 关12兴, and
Hong et al. 关13兴, who worked extensively on thermal dispersion
effects, treated them as a single parameter (Ds⫽ ␥ Ra), as the
value of ␥ depends on the experiment. In the present investigation
also, we consider the thermal and solutal dispersion parameters
Pe␥ and Pe␨ with ␥ and ␨ included in the parameters. In Eq. 共5兲,
the positive and negative signs represent aiding and opposing
flows, respectively. N⬎0 indicates the aiding buoyancy and N
⬍0 indicates the opposing buoyancy.
3 Results and Discussion

The resulting ordinary differential Eqs. 共5兲–共7兲 are integrated
by giving appropriate initial guess values for f ⬘ (0), ␪ ⬘ (0), and
␾ ⬘ (0) to match the values with the corresponding boundary con-
ditions at f ⬘ (⬁), ␪共⬁兲, and ␾共⬁兲, respectively. NAG software
共D02HAFE routine兲 is used for integrating the corresponding
first-order system of equations and shooting and matching the
initial and boundary conditions. The results are observed up to an
accuracy of 5.0⫻10⫺6 . Extensive calculations have been per-
formed to obtain the flow, temperature, and concentration fields
for a wide range of parameters 0⭐F o Pe⭐2, 0⭐Ra/Pe⭐100,
⫺1⬍N⭐4, 0.01⭐Le⭐100, 0⭐Pe␥ ⭐5, and 0⭐Pe␨ ⭐5. As an
indication of proper formulation and accurate calculation, the re-
sults obtained here are compared with previously published ana-
lytical results. Fig. 2 Nondimensional velocity profiles f ⬘ „ ␩ … for À1Ë N Ë0,
LeÄ0.1 „aiding flow…
With F o Pe⫽0, Pe␥ ⫽0, and Pe␨ ⫽0, the present problem re-
duces to heat and mass transfer by Darcian mixed convection in
porous media analyzed by Lai 关4兴. By setting the parameters N
⫽0, Le⫽1, and Pe␨ ⫽0, the problem reduces to that of non-
Darcian mixed convection along a vertical wall in a saturated also clear from both these figures that the inertial effects delay the
porous medium, which has been studied by Lai and Kulacki 关15兴. occurrence of this phenomena. The work by Lai 关4兴 did not reveal
The comparison showed that the present results match exactly this phenomenon; recently Angirasa et al. 关5兴 noticed flow rever-
with the results presented in the above works. When N is compa- sal for N⫽⫺0.5 and ⫺1.5 when Le⬍1 in their study of free-
rable with ⫺1, the temperature and concentration buoyancy ef- convection heat and mass transfer in a fluid-saturated porous en-
fects are of the same order of magnitude and in opposing direc- closure. They observed this phenomenon at large values of the
tions. Due to this, the resulting flow does not have the parallel flow-governing Rayleigh number. Mahajan and Angirasa 关27兴 re-
double boundary layer structure. Contrary to what has been reported similar observations in connection with free-convection
ported by Bejan and Khair 关1兴, Lai and Kulacki 关2兴 and Murthy heat and mass transfer in the case of opposing buoyancies in clear
and Singh 关3兴 found similarity solutions for Le⫽1 and ⫺1⬍N fluids also.
⬍0, and the solutions in the range of N⬍⫺1 are impossible.
These contradictions are resolved clearly in Lai and Kulacki 关2兴.
In fact, the results presented below uncover some interesting facts
regarding the flow field in the boundary layer, heat, and mass
transfer coefficients.
3.1 Aiding Flow. When buoyancy is aiding the flow, for
N⬎0 共aiding buoyancy case兲 the tangential velocity evolves from
nonzero wall velocity to uniform freestream velocity for all values
of Le⬎0. In the case of opposing buoyancy (N⬍0), when Le⬎1,
the flow field follows the same pattern. But when 0⬍Le⬍1, a
distinct feature is observed. The vertical component of velocity
attains negative values near the wall and well inside the boundary
layer. Far from the wall it attains its outer edge boundary condi-
tion. This may be explained as follows. When N⬍0 the down-
ward species buoyancy overpowers the upward thermal buoyancy
and Le⬍1 results in larger solutal diffusion than the thermal dif-
fusion. The favorable action of Ra/Pe to the flow field is countered
by the opposing buoyancy (N⬍0) and also by the higher solutal
diffusivity (Le⬍1). The flow reversal is seen when the later ef-
fects dominate the flow favoring mixed convection parameter.
This phenomena is clearly seen in Figs. 2 and 3. In these figures
the tangential velocity component is plotted against similarity
variable for ⫺1⬍N⬍0 and 0⬍Le⬍1.
The Ra/Pe values indicated in the figures correspond to the
minimum Ra/Pe for which flow reversal occurred under the fixed
values of other parameters. For fixed Le, this value of Ra/Pe in-
creases with the decrease in the value of the buoyancy ratio. For
fixed value of buoyancy ratio N, this value of Ra/Pe increases with
the increase in the value of the diffusion ratio Le. This phenomena Fig. 3 Nondimensional velocity profiles f ⬘ „ ␩ … for 0ËLeË1, N
is seen in both Darcy and non-Darcy mixed convection flows. It is ÄÀ0.5 „aiding flow…
Fig. 4 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of Lewis number Fig. 6 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of Lewis number
when N Ë0. Here N ÄÀ0.5, Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ „aiding flow…. when N Ë0. Here N ÄÀ0.5, Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ „aiding flow….
Now the heat and mass transfer coefficients, in terms of the ⫽0 and Pe␨ ⫽0, the Eqs. 共9兲 and 共10兲 reduce to Nu/Pe1/2 x
Nusselt and Sherwood numbers in the presence of thermal and ⫽⫺ ␪ ⬘ (0) and Sh/Pe1/2x ⫽⫺ ␾ ⬘ (0). The effect of diffusivity ratio
solutal dispersion diffusivities, can be written as and the buoyancy ratio on heat and mass transfer coefficients is
plotted in Figs. 4–7 for two values of inertial parameter
Nu F o Pe⫽0.1 共near Darcy-region兲 and F o Pe⫽1.0 共non-Darcy re-
⫽⫺ 关 1⫹Pe␥ f ⬘ 共 0 兲兴 ␪ ⬘ 共 0 兲 , (9)
Pe1/2
x gion兲. The inertial effects always decrease the heat and mass
transfer coefficients in both opposing and aiding buoyancies. The
Sh increase in the value of the mixed convection parameter increases
⫽⫺ 关 1⫹Pe␨ f ⬘ 共 0 兲兴 ␾ ⬘ 共 0 兲 . (10)
Pe1/2
x
the heat and mass transfer rates. It is clearly seen from these
figures that the convection favoring effect of Ra/Pe is countered
With F o Pe⫽0, Pe␥ ⫽0, and Pe␨ ⫽0, the observations made here by the microscopic drag due to the increase in the inertial param-
are consistent with those reported by Lai 关4兴. It is observed that eter. The heat transfer coefficient is observed to increase with the
for Le⬎1, the heat transfer coefficient increases for N⬍0 and it diffusivity ratio in the opposing buoyancy case whereas it de-
decreases for N⬎0. For Le⬍1, the situation is reversed. For Pe␥ creases in the aiding buoyancy case. This is clearly seen from
Fig. 5 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of Lewis number Fig. 7 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of Lewis number
when N Ì0. Here, N Ä4.0, Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ „aiding flow…. when N Ì0. Here, N Ä4.0, Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ „aiding flow….
Table 1 À ␪ ⬘ „0… for N ÄÀ0.5, F o PeÄ1.0 and Pe␨ Ä0
Le⫽1 Le⫽10
Ra/Pe f ⬘ (0) Pe␥ ⫽0 Pe␥ ⫽1 Pe␥ ⫽5 Pe␥ ⫽0 Pe␥ ⫽1 Pe␥ ⫽5
0 1.0 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303
1 1.1583 0.5922 0.4027 0.2305 0.6054 0.4151 0.2368
5 1.6794 0.6793 0.4186 0.2354 0.7244 0.4544 0.2500
10 2.1926 0.7580 0.4344 0.2405 0.8247 0.4801 0.2568
20 3.0 0.8706 0.4557 0.2465 0.9617 0.5069 0.2627
50 4.7262 1.0768 0.4870 0.2541 1.203 0.5387 0.2684
100 6.7284 1.2797 0.5096 0.2588 1.4347 0.5581 0.2713
Table 2 À ␪ ⬘ „0… for N Ä1.0, F o PeÄ1.0 and Pe␨ Ä0
Le⫽1 Le⫽10
0 1.0 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303
1 1.5616 0.6603 0.3892 0.1984 0.6377 0.3706 0.1901
5 3.0 0.8706 0.3771 0.1695 0.8083 0.3411 0.1576
10 4.217 1.0203 0.3714 0.1609 0.9358 0.3323 0.1494
20 6.0 1.2097 0.3657 0.1552 1.1012 0.3269 0.1449
50 9.6119 1.5295 0.3585 0.1507 1.3837 0.3234 0.1423
100 13.7215 1.8237 0.3535 0.1488 1.6492 0.3221 0.1415
Fig. 9 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe when
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ10.0, Pe␨ Ä0 „aiding flow…
Figs. 4 and 5. For fixed values of other parameters, the magnitude

of Nu/Pe1/2
x for N⬎0 is higher than that for N⬍0 for all values of for large Pe␥ , in a very small region near the wall, the tempera-
Le considered in the study. This clearly indicates that the buoy- ture gradient is greatly increased and as a result heat transfer is
ancy ratio has significant effect on the heat transfer coefficient greatly enhanced due to thermal dispersion. The wall temperature
than the diffusivity ratio. Figures 6 and 7 clearly indicate the gradient values for F o Pe⫽1, for two values of N⫽⫺0.5 and 1.0
favorable effect of the Lewis number on the mass transfer coeffi- are presented in Tables 1–2. The value of f ⬘ (0) is dependent on
cient in both opposing and aiding buoyancies. Uniform trend in F o Pe and this is evident from the previous studies as well. From
the Sherwood number results is observed with increase in the these two tables, it is also clear that f ⬘ (0) depends on the buoy-
buoyancy ratio N from ⫺1 to 4. ancy ratio N. The heat transfer coefficient written in terms of the
The variation of the heat transfer coefficient with Ra/Pe for Nusselt number using Eq. 共9兲 is calculated from the values of
nonzero values of Pe␥ is studied for a wide range of values of Le. ⫺ ␪ ⬘ (0) for the nonzero dispersion coefficient and is plotted in
The effect of thermal dispersion on the heat transfer is studied Figs. 8–9 for Le⫽1.0 and 10.0, respectively. Figures clearly indi-
keeping Pe␨ ⫽0. Consistent with the results presented in Lai and cate the favorable influence of thermal dispersion on the heat
Kulacki 关15兴 and Hong and Tien 关12兴, the value of ⫺ ␪ ⬘ (0) de- transfer results. The Nu/Pe1/2
x value increases with increasing Ra/
creases as the thermal dispersion coefficient Pe␥ increases. Also Pe. Aiding buoyancy favors the heat transfer, whereas this favor-
able action is aided by increasing the value of Le when N⬍0 and
is suppressed by an increase in the value of Le when N⬎0. This
is evident from the Figs. 8–9. These results are in agreement with
the results reported by Lai 关4兴.
The effect of solutal dispersion on the mass transfer coefficient
has been analyzed keeping Pe␥ ⫽0. The values of ⫺ ␾ ⬘ (0) have
been tabulated for F o Pe⫽1 and for two values of N⫽⫺0.5 and
1.0 in Tables 3–4. Analogous to the pure thermal convection pro-
cess, the value of ⫺ ␾ ⬘ (0) decreases with increasing values of
Pe␨ . Interestingly, at large Pe␨ , for large values of Ra/Pe, in a
relatively large region 共larger than that observed for thermal gra-
dients兲 near the wall, the concentration gradient is greatly in-
creased. But, against this expectation, peculiar behavior in the
mass transfer coefficient is observed. The imbalance between the
Table 3 À ␾ ⬘ „0… for N ÄÀ0.5, F o PeÄ1.0 and Pe␥ Ä0
Le⫽1 Le⫽10
0 1.0 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303 1.7841 0.5379 0.2498
1 1.1583 0.5922 0.3888 0.2062 1.9329 0.512 0.2208
5 1.6794 0.6793 0.3555 0.1463 2.3534 0.4463 0.1534
10 2.1926 0.758 0.3258 0.105 2.7009 0.3992 0.1109
20 3.0 0.8706 0.2835 0.0716 3.1686 0.3441 0.0769
50 4.7262 1.0768 0.219 0.0483 3.9815 0.2678 0.0515
Fig. 8 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe when 100 6.7284 1.2797 0.1801 0.0383 4.7585 0.2168 0.0403
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ1.0, Pe␨ Ä0 „aiding flow…
Table 4 À ␾ ⬘ „0… for N Ä1.0, F o PeÄ1.0 and Pe␥ Ä0
Le⫽1 Le⫽10
0 1.0 0.5642 0.3989 0.2303 1.7841 0.5379 0.2498
1 1.5616 0.6603 0.3892 0.1984 2.1381 0.4773 0.2078
5 3.0 0.8706 0.3771 0.1695 2.8864 0.4215 0.1728
10 4.217 1.0203 0.3714 0.1609 3.4061 0.4018 0.1629
20 6.0 1.2097 0.3657 0.1552 4.0548 0.3858 0.1564
50 9.6119 1.5295 0.3585 0.1507 5.1295 0.3698 0.1514
100 13.7215 1.8237 0.3535 0.1488 6.1278 0.3607 0.1492
Lewis number and buoyancy parameter influence more against the

enhancement of mass transfer results. For Pe␨ ⫽0, the value of
⫺ ␾ ⬘ (0) increases with increasing values of Ra/Pe for all values
of Le and N. For large Pe␨ , the value of ⫺ ␾ ⬘ (0) decreases rap-
idly to near zero values with increasing Ra/Pe.
The mass transfer results are not straightforward for analysis.
The complex interaction between Le, N, Pe␨ , and Ra/Pe show
complex behavior for Sh/Pe1/2
x curves. The results presented in the
Figs. 10 and 11 are for Le⫽1 and 10 with F o Pe⫽1 and Pe␥ ⫽0. In
the case of aiding buoyancy, when Le⫽1, the mass transfer coef-
ficient increases with Ra/Pe and the dispersion mechanism aug-
ments the mass transfer. In fact, these curves are same as the Fig. 11 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe when
curves presented for N⫽1.0 in Fig. 8 共see the Eqs. 共5兲–共7兲 with F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ10.0, Pe␥ Ä0 „aiding flow…
Le⫽1兲. But this is not the case in the opposing buoyancy. When
N⬍0 and Le⫽1, Sh/Pe1/2 x increases with Ra/Pe for Pe␨ ⫽0 and
Pe␨ ⫽1. When Pe␨ ⫽5, it increases with Ra/Pe up to the value 5 large values of Le, the effect of the dispersion parameter is not
and then decreases thereafter. Its value becomes less than the favorable for the mass transfer up to a certain low value of Ra/Pe.
corresponding value for Pe␨ ⫽1 from Ra/Pe⫽20 onwards; it may Also, there exists a critical value of Ra/Pe after which the disper-
be inferred that the strength of the solutal dispersion becomes sion effects are significant in the mass transfer mechanism. With
insignificant at higher values of Ra/Pe in the case of opposing Le⫽10 and N⬍0, the Sh/Pe1/2 x curve for Pe␨ ⫽0 is always at a
buoyancy. higher level than that for Pe␨ ⫽1 and 5. This shows that as the
Unlike when Le⫽1, for Le⬎1, even for N⬎0, there is no clear value of the Lewis number increases, the dispersion effects reduce
pattern for the mass transfer results. From Fig. 11 it can be ob- the mass transfer rate at moderate and higher values of Ra/Pe in
served that the curve for Pe␨ ⫽1 is always at a lower level than the opposing buoyancy. Thus the complex interactions between
that for Pe␨ ⫽0. Also, the curve for Pe␨ ⫽5 is at a lower level up F o Pe, Le, N, Ra/Pe and the pair Pe␥ and Pe␨ prevent us from
to Ra/Pe⫽5 and from that point onwards the Sh/Pe1/2 making any general statement about the mass transfer mechanism.
x values are
greater than the corresponding values of that for Pe␨ ⫽0. This 3.2 Opposing Flow. The flow field becomes more complex
shows clearly that in the aiding buoyancy case, for moderate to when the freestream flow is opposing the buoyancy. Like in the
Fig. 12 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of Le for various

Fig. 10 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe when values of N when Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ , RaÕPeÄ1.0, F o PeÄ1.0 „oppos-
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ1.0, Pe␥ Ä0 „aiding flow… ing flow…
Fig. 13 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of Le for vari-
ous values of N when Pe␥ Ä0ÄPe␨ , RaÕPeÄ1.0, F o PeÄ1.0 „op- Fig. 15 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe in the
posing flow… presence of thermal dispersion effects in non-Darcy flow. Here
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ10.0, Pe␨ Ä0 „opposing flow….
aiding flow case, the wall velocity depends only on the inertial diffusivity will not alter the point of flow separation in both Darcy
parameter and the buoyancy ratio. It is independent on the Lewis and non-Darcy flows.
number. Flow separation is the most common feature observed in The heat and mass transfer coefficients in opposing flow are
the opposing flows. The flow separation point also depends on the presented in Figs. 12–17. As expected, the heat transfer decreases
buoyancy ratio. In the absence of thermal and solutal dispersion with Le for opposing buoyancy, whereas it increases with Le for
effects, the separation point in the Darcy flow (F o Pe⫽0) is seen aiding buoyancy. It is just a reverse mechanism to the aiding flow
to occur at Ra/Pe⫽2.0, 1.1, 1, 0.5 for N⫽⫺0.5, ⫺0.1, 0, 1.0, case and is clearly seen in Fig. 12. The Nu/Pe1/2 x values for the
respectively. In the Forchheimer flow (F o Pe⫽1.0) the occurence opposing buoyancy are at higher level than those for aiding buoy-
of the flow separation is delayed, the separation points are ob- ancy. It is evident from the Fig. 13 that the mass transfer coeffi-
served to occur at Ra/Pe⫽4.0, 2.3, 2.0, 1.0 for N⫽⫺0.5, ⫺0.1, 0, cient increases with Le here also, the Sh/Pe1/2x values in opposing
1.0, respectively. The presence of thermal and solutal dispersion buoyancy are at higher level than those in aiding buoyancy. Aid-
Fig. 14 Heat transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe in the Fig. 16 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe in the
presence of thermal dispersion effects in non-Darcy flow. Here presence of solutal dispersion effects in non-Darcy flow. Here
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ1.0, Pe␨ Ä0 „opposing flow…. F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ1.0, Pe␥ Ä0 „opposing flow….
coefficients is seen with increasing values of Ra/Pe. Here also the
Lewis number has complex impact on the heat and mass transfer
mechanism.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to the reviewers for their encouraging com-
ments and constructive suggestions to improve the manuscript. I
thank Prof. A. Avudainayagam, Department of Mathematics, IIT–
Madras for his constant encouragement and support during my
post-doctoral research. I sincerely acknowledge the CSIR 共IN-
DIA兲 for its financial support in carrying out this research.
Nomenclature
c ⫽ inertial coefficient
C ⫽ concentration
d ⫽ pore diameter
D ⫽ mass diffusivity
De ⫽ effective mass diffusivity
f ⫽ nondimensional stream function
F o Pe ⫽ c 冑KU ⬁ / ␯ , parameter representing non-Darcian
effects
g ⫽ acceleration due to gravity
Fig. 17 Mass transfer coefficient as a function of RaÕPe in the K ⫽ permeability
presence of solutal dispersion effects in non-Darcy flow. Here Le ⫽ ␣ /D, Lewis number
F o PeÄ1.0, LeÄ10.0, Pe␥ Ä0 „opposing flow…. N ⫽ ␤ C ␾ w / ␤ T ␪ w , buoyancy ratio
Nu/Pe1/2
x ⫽ nondimensional heat transfer coefficient; ref Eq. 共9兲
Sh/Pe1/2
x ⫽ nondimensional mass transfer coefficient; ref Eq.
共10兲
ing buoyancy is hindrance to the free stream flow in the opposing Pex ⫽ local Peclet number u ⬁ x/ ␣
flow case, so a reduction in the transport quantities is observed. Pe ⫽ u ⬁ d/ ␣
The variation of Nu/Pe1/2x with Ra/Pe in the opposing flow is Pe␥ ⫽ ␥ U ⬁ d/ ␣ , parameter representing thermal dispersion
plotted in Figs. 14–15 with F o Pe⫽1 for different values of N and effects
Pe␥ . Thermal dispersion enhances the heat transfer rate in both Pe␨ ⫽ ␨ U ⬁ d/ ␣ , parameter representing solutal dispersion
N⬎0 and N⬍0 for all values of Le⬎0. Interestingly, for fixed effects
Le, and nonzero Pe␥ , there exists one critical value of Ra/Pe Rax ⫽ modified Rayleigh number, Kg ␤ T ␪ w x/ ␣ ␯
before which the Nu/Pe1/2 x for N⫽1.0 is more than that for N Ra ⫽ Kg ␤ T ␪ w d/ ␣ ␯
⫽⫺0.5 and after which its reverse is seen. These arguments are T ⫽ temperature
evident from Figs. 14–15. u, v ⫽ velocity components in x and y-directions,
The Sh/Pe1/2 respectively
x is plotted against Ra/Pe for F o Pe⫽1 and for six
combinations of Pe␨ and N in Figs. 16–17. Here also, the mass x, y ⫽ Cartesian coordinates
transfer coefficient decreases with Ra/Pe, the dispersion effect en- Greek Symbols
hances the mass transfer, and the existence of critical Ra/Pe for
␣ ⫽ molecular thermal diffusivity
which the dual behavior of the mass transfer coefficient is ob-
␣e ⫽ effective thermal diffusivity
served. In the opposing flow also, the complex interactions be-
␤T ⫽ thermal expansion coefficient
tween these parameters do not permit a clear pattern for the heat
␤C ⫽ solutal expansion coefficient
and mass transfer results.
␩ ⫽ similarity variable
␯ ⫽ kinematic viscosity
␺ ⫽ stream function
Conclusions ␪ ⫽ nondimensional temperature
Similarity solution for hydrodynamic dispersion in mixed con- ␾ ⫽ nondimensional concentration
vection heat and mass transfer near vertical surface embedded in a ␥ ⫽ coefficient of dispersion thermal diffusivity
porous medium has been presented. The heat and mass transfer in ␨ ⫽ coefficient of dispersion solutal diffusivity
the boundary layer region has been analyzed for aiding and op- Subscripts
posing buoyancies in both the aiding and opposing flows. The
w ⫽ evaluated at wall
structure of the flow, temperature, and concentration fields in the
⬁ ⫽ evaluated at the outer edge of the boundary layer
Darcy and non-Darcy porous media are governed by complex
interactions among the diffusion rates 共Le兲 and buoyancy ratio 共N兲
in addition to the flow driving parameter 共Ra/Pe兲. Extensive cal- References
culations for a wide range of these parameters are performed. For 关1兴 Bejan, A., and Khair, K. R., 1985, ‘‘Heat and Mass Transfer by Natural Con-
small values of Le in the opposing buoyancy, flow reversal near vection in a Porous Medium,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 28, pp. 909–918.
关2兴 Lai, F. C., and Kulacki, F. A., 1991a, ‘‘Coupled Heat and Mass Transfer by
the wall is observed. The heat transfer coefficient always increases Natural Convection From Vertical Surfaces in Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat
with Ra/Pe. Thermal dispersion favors the heat transfer. As Le Mass Transf., 34, pp. 1189–1194.
increases, the effect of solutal dispersion on the nondimensional 关3兴 Murthy, P. V. S. N., and Singh, P., 1998, ‘‘Heat and Mass Transfer by Natural
mass transfer coefficient becomes less predictable in both aiding Convection in a Non-Darcy Porous Medium,’’ Acta Mech., accepted for pub-
lication.
and opposing buoyancies. In the opposing flow case, the flow 关4兴 Lai, F. C., 1991, ‘‘Coupled Heat and Mass Transfer by Mixed Convection
separation point is observed to depend on the inertial parameter From a Vertical Plate in a Saturated Porous Medium,’’ Int. Commun. Heat
and buoyancy ratio. A reduction in the heat and mass transfer Mass Transfer, 18, pp. 93–106.
关5兴 Angirasa, D., Peterson, G. P., and Pop, I., 1997, ‘‘Combined Heat and Mass Dispersion and Stratification on Combined Convection on a Vertical Surface
Transfer by Natural Convection With Opposing Buoyancy Effects in a Fluid Embedded in a Porous Medium,’’ Transp. Porous Media, 25, pp. 275–282.
Saturated Porous Medium,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 2755–2773. 关18兴 Murthy, P. V. S. N., and Singh, P., 1997, ‘‘Effect of Viscous Dissipation on a
关6兴 Vafai, K., and Tien, C. L., 1981, ‘‘Boundary and Inertia Effects on Flow and Non-Darcy Natural Convection Regime,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp.
Heat Transfer in Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 24, pp. 195–203. 1251–1260.
关7兴 Vafai, K., and Tien, C. L., 1982, ‘‘Boundary and Inertia Effects on Convective 关19兴 Murthy, P. V. S. N., and Singh, P., 1997, ‘‘Thermal Dispersion Effects on
Mass Transfer in Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 25, pp. 1183– Non-Darcy Natural Convection Over Horizontal Plate With Surface Mass
1190. Flux,’’ Arch. Appl. Mech., 67, pp. 487–495.
关8兴 Whitaker, S., 1997, ‘‘The Forchheimer Equation: A Theoretical Develop- 关20兴 Nield, D. A., and Bejan, A., 1992, Convection in Porous Media, Springer-
ment,’’ Transp. Porous Media, 25, pp. 27–61. Verlag, New York.
关9兴 Bear, J., 1972, Dynamics of Fluids in Porous Media, Elsevier, New York. 关21兴 Karimi-Fard, M., Charrier-Mojtabi, M. C., and Vafai, K., 1997, ‘‘Non-Darcian
关10兴 Kvernvold, O., and Tyvand, P., 1980, ‘‘Dispersion Effect on Thermal Convec- Effects on Double-Diffusive Convection Within a Porous Medium,’’ Numer.
tion in Porous Media,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 99, pp. 673–686. Heat Transfer, Part A, 31, pp. 837–852.
关11兴 Plumb, O. A., 1981, ‘‘The Effect of Thermal Dispersion on Heat Transfer in 关22兴 Dagan, G., 1972, ‘‘Some Aspects of Heat and Mass Transport in Porous Me-
Packed Bed Boundary Layers,’’ ASME-JSME Joint Thermal Conference Pro- dia,’’ Developments in Soil Science: Fundamentals of Transport Phenomena
ceedings, Vol. 2, ASME, New York, pp. 17–21. in Porous Media, International Association for Hydraulic Research, Elsevier,
关12兴 Hong, J. T., and Tien, C. L., 1987, ‘‘Analysis of Thermal Dispersion Effect on London, pp. 55–63.
Vertical Plate Natural Convection in Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 关23兴 Telles, R. S., and Trevisan, O. V., 1993, ‘‘Dispersion in Heat and Mass Trans-
30, pp. 143–150. fer Natural Convection Along Vertical Boundaries in Porous Media,’’ Int. J.
关13兴 Hong, J. T., Yamada, Y., and Tien, C. L., 1987, ‘‘Effect of Non-Darcian and Heat Mass Transf., 36, pp. 1357–1365.
Non-Uniform Porosity on Vertical Plate Natural Convection in Porous Me- 关24兴 Murthy, P. V. S. N., and Singh, P., 1997, ‘‘Thermal Dispersion Effects on
dia,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 109, pp. 356–362. Non-Darcy Natural Convection With Lateral Mass Flux,’’ Heat Mass Transfer,
关14兴 Cheng, P., and Vortmeyer, D., 1988, ‘‘Transverse Thermal Dispersion and 33, pp. 1–5.
Wall Channeling in a Packed Bed With Forced Convection Flow,’’ Chem. 关25兴 Saffman, P. G., 1960, ‘‘Dispersion due to Molecular Diffusion and Macro-
Eng. Sci., 43, pp. 2523–2532. scopic Mixing in Flow Through a Network of Capillaries,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 7,
关15兴 Lai, F. C., and Kulacki, F. A., 1991b, ‘‘Non-Darcy Mixed Convection Along pp. 194–208.
a Vertical Wall in Saturated Porous Medium,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 113, 关26兴 Lai, F. C., and Kulacki, F. A., 1989, ‘‘Thermal Dispersion Effects on Non-
pp. 252–255. Darcy Convection Over Horizontal Surfaces in Saturated Porous Media,’’ Int.
关16兴 Amiri, A., and Vafai, K., 1994, ‘‘Analysis of Dispersion Effects and Non- J. Heat Mass Transf., 32, pp. 356–362.
Theormal Equilibrium, Non-Darcian, Variable Porosity Incompressible Flow 关27兴 Mahajan, R. L., and Angirasa, D., 1993, ‘‘Combined Heat and Mass Transfer
Through Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 37, pp. 936–954. by Natural Convection With Opposing Buoyancies,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer,
关17兴 Gorla, R. S. R., Bakier, A. Y., and Byrd, L., 1996, ‘‘Effects of Thermal 115, pp. 606–612.
Laminar Natural Convection in
Isosceles Triangular Enclosures
G. A. Holtzman
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Heated From Below and
The University of Texas at Austin,
Austin, TX 78712
Symmetrically Cooled From
R. W. Hill
Assoc. Mem. ASME
Above
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
A numerical study of natural convection in an isosceles triangular enclosure with a
Engineering,
heated horizontal base and cooled upper walls is presented. Nearly every previous study
University of Missouri-Columbia,
conducted on this subject to date has assumed that the geometric plane of symmetry is
Columbia, MO 65211
also a plane of symmetry for the flow. This problem is re-examined over aspect ratios
e-mail: hillrw@missouri.edu
ranging from 0.2 to 1.0 and Grashof numbers from 103 to 105 . It is found that a pitchfork
bifurcation occurs at a critical Grashof number for each of the aspect ratios considered,
K. S. Ball above which the symmetric solutions are unstable to finite perturbations and asymmetric
Mem. ASME
solutions are instead obtained. Results are presented detailing the occurrence of the
pitchfork bifurcation in each of the aspect ratios considered, and the resulting flow pat-
terns are described. A flow visualization study is used to validate the numerical observa-
Austin, TX 78712
tions. Computed local and mean heat transfer coefficients are also presented and com-
e-mail: kball@burst.me.utexas.edu
pared with results obtained when flow symmetry is assumed. Differences in local values of
the Nusselt number between asymmetric and symmetric solutions are found to be more
than 500 percent due to the shifting of the buoyancy-driven cells.
关S0022-1481共00兲02503-2兴
Keywords: Computational, Enclosure Flows, Heat Transfer, Instability, Natural

Convection
Introduction equations of motion for A⫽0.2 to 20 and Gr⫽103 to 106 . For the
In this study, consideration is given to laminar natural convec- cases they considered with symmetric boundary conditions and
tion in an isosceles triangular enclosure heated from below with heating from below, no symmetry assumption was made. Trian-
gular elements with linear interpolation were used, and the result-
symmetric boundary conditions. The situation simulates the night- ing graded mesh was very symmetric. The solutions obtained
time heating of an attic space. Previous studies of this topic have were all symmetric about the midplane.
been performed both numerically and experimentally. Several ear- A continuing source of discrepancies in the literature is the
lier studies have been performed for triangular enclosures in gen- calculation of average Nu 共average dimensionless temperature
eral 共关1–3兴兲, but the focus of this paper is on isosceles triangular gradient兲 along the base for the triangular enclosure. Akinsete and
enclosures with symmetric temperature boundary conditions Coleman 关4兴 recognized the existence of unbounded heat transfer
heated from below. at the corner of the enclosure where a temperature discontinuity
In modeling natural convection in an isosceles triangular enclo- exists, and calculated the limiting value of Nu using a method
sure, nearly every numerical study previously reported in the lit- outlined by Collatz 关10兴. Poulikakos and Bejan 关5兴 proposed start-
erature employed a symmetry condition at the midplane and per- ing the integration of the temperature gradient from a set distance
formed the simulations using only one half of the physical away from the corner, thereby avoiding the singularity. Del
domain. Akinsete and Coleman 关4兴 used a finite difference repre- Campo et al. 关9兴 proposed a convective Nu defined as the differ-
sentation of the steady-state stream function, vorticity, and energy ence between Nu for the case considered and Nu for pure conduc-
equations with an adiabatic boundary condition for the vertical tion 共using the same grid resolution兲. Salmun 关7兴 and Hasani and
wall in a right triangular enclosure, and made the claim that the Chung 关8兴 did not specifically discuss the problem of the singu-
problem could also represent the case for an isosceles triangular larity and reported similar results for their average Nu due to
enclosure due to symmetry. Poulikakos and Bejan 关5兴 used a simi- having used the same grid resolutions.
lar numerical approach, except that transient simulations were A limited number of laboratory experiments have been con-
performed and an actual symmetry condition was used at the mid- ducted for natural convection in triangular enclosures with base
plane for Gr up to 105 and A⫽0.2 to 1.0. The use of the symmetry heating. One experiment reported in the literature involving sym-
condition for this problem was continued by Ghassemi and Roux metric temperature boundary conditions for an isosceles triangular
关6兴, Salmun 关7兴, and Hasani and Chung 关8兴. enclosure and base heating was done by Flack 关11兴. The flow was
Del Campo et al. 关9兴 numerically modeled natural convection reported as ‘‘turbulent’’ for Gr⫽3⫻105 with A⫽0.58 and for
in triangular enclosures using a Galerkin finite element method
Gr⫽8.9⫻105 with A⫽1.0. Nu values were inferred using a Wol-
with a stream function-vorticity formulation of the steady-state
laston prism schlieren interferometer. Flow patterns were deter-
mined qualitatively using a particle-based visualization technique
HEAT TRANSFER and presented at the 1998 IMECE, Anaheim. Manuscript received
and quantitative measurements were taken using a laser velocime-
by the Heat Transfer Division, Sept. 11, 1998; revision received, Jan. 6, 2000. As- ter. For the heated base experiments, no mention was made as to
sociate Technical Editor: R. Douglass. the symmetry of the flow. Poulikakos and Bejan 关12兴 conducted
experiments in a right triangular enclosure with an insulated ver- The computational domain was discretized with a paved mesh
tical wall, and noted that the flow phenomenon should be similar of quadratic triangular elements, and the pressure solution was
to that found in a symmetric triangular space. carried out using a discontinuous pressure approximation 共关13兴兲.
The purpose of this paper is to provide steady-state numerical The elements were formed by distributing points evenly 共no grad-
results considering the entire triangular region without symmetry ing兲 along each edge of the computational domain, and the FIDAP
assumptions. Removing the symmetry assumption leads to new paved meshing algorithm was used to generate all grids. The grids
results; specifically, the occurrence of symmetry breaking pitch- generated in this manner were not symmetric about the geometric
fork bifurcations. Local and mean heat transfer coefficients are plane of symmetry, but the elements were reasonably evenly dis-
presented, and compared with results in which a symmetric flow tributed. Grid independence tests were performed on key param-
pattern is assumed. Flow visualization results from laboratory ex- eters of this study such as the maximum x-component of velocity
periments are also provided to qualitatively confirm the numerical at the geometric symmetry plane, local and average convective
observations. Nusselt numbers along the base, and the onset of the bifurcation.
As a result of this grid study, the detailed results reported here had
Numerical Model 120, 200, and 260 segments 共or half as many quadratic elements兲
along the base for A⫽1.0, 0.5, and 0.2, respectively. The ad-
A long air-filled triangular enclosure 共Pr⫽0.71兲 is considered equacy of the grids chosen is demonstrated in the grid indepen-
such that the region of interest is two-dimensional with cross sec- dence study provided at the end of the results section.
tion and boundary conditions as shown in Fig. 1. The Cartesian
two-dimensional Navier-Stokes and energy equations are solved
in nondimensional form assuming constant properties using the Flow Visualization Study
commercial finite element code FIDAP, version 7.6 共Fluent, Inc., To confirm the numerical predictions of the flow patterns and
Lebanon, NH兲 subject to the Boussinesq approximation. the existence of a symmetry-breaking bifurcation, a flow visual-
The boundary conditions for the base, the left side, and the right ization study was conducted. Smoke was slowly injected into an
side, respectively, are air-filled triangular enclosure, having a height of 56 mm, half-
length of 112 mm, and a depth of 327 mm 共resulting in an aspect
1 1 ratio of A⫽0.5兲. The ends of the enclosure were sealed by Plexi-
U⫽V⫽0 and ␪ ⫽1 at ⫺ ⭐X⭐ , Y ⫽0 (1)
A A glas plates. The enclosure was constructed of 20-mm-thick alumi-
num plates with milled passageways for circulating fluid to main-
1 tain isothermal surfaces and to impose a temperature difference
U⫽V⫽0 and ␪ ⫽0 at ⫺ ⭐X⭐0, Y ⫽AX⫹1 (2)
A between the base and upper walls. Fine-gage 共0.005-in.兲 Type K
thermocouples, calibrated to reduce experimental uncertainty,
1 were potted to the aluminum plates using high thermal conductiv-
U⫽V⫽0 and ␪ ⫽0 at 0⭐X⭐ , Y ⫽⫺AX⫹1 (3)
A ity paste. In the middle of the enclosure, two Plexiglas-covered
slits separated by approximately 86 mm in the third dimension
In the present work, Gr up to 105 is considered for aspect ratios
共depth兲 allowed different cross-sectional planes of the enclosure to
of A⫽1.0, 0.5, and 0.2. Though others have numerically consid-
be illuminated by He-Ne laser sheets, providing the visualization
ered higher Gr, the maximum of Gr⫽105 was chosen here due to of the flow. By comparing the smoke patterns at the two depths,
the experimental work of Flack 关11兴 in which unsteady flow was the flow was confirmed to be two-dimensional for the range of Gr
reported between Gr⫽105 and 106 . The steady-state form of the considered. The primary experimental uncertainty affecting Gr
Navier-Stokes and energy equations were solved subject to the was the uncertainty in the measured temperature difference, esti-
above boundary conditions using a convergence criterion of 10⫺6 mated to be approximately ⫾0.1 K based on multiple measure-
for the rms norm of the difference between successive solution ments of a steady variable 共关14兴兲. This corresponds to an uncer-
vectors normalized by the last solution vector for each dependent tainty of ⫾2275 in Gr 共for air at 300 K兲.
variable. Convergence criteria down to 10⫺10 were used for select
cases and found to result in negligible solution differences from Results and Discussion
the chosen criterion. To avoid exceeding the available computer
memory, the successive substitution solution approach was used Symmetric Flow. The assumption of symmetric flow in the
for the relatively coarse grid resolution cases, whereas the segre- isosceles triangle used by other researchers in defining their nu-
gated solver was used for the relatively fine grid resolutions merical models is in fact correct for low values of Gr. In Fig. 2,
共关13兴兲. Both the segregated and successive substitution approaches the streamlines and temperature contours of the flow are shown
were used on selected cases to ensure that the results were not for Gr⫽103 and for A⫽1.0, 0.5, and 0.2, respectively. At this
dependent on the approach chosen. To confirm that the steady- value of Gr, for each aspect ratio the computed flow is symmetric
state assumption was appropriate, transient solutions of the equa- with respect to the geometric midplane. The flow rises in the
tions were performed at Gr⫽105 for each aspect ratio, and the center of the enclosure and falls along each cold inclined side
solutions were found to be steady. The flow visualization studies creating mirror image structures that rotate clockwise in the right
共discussed later兲 confirm that the flow at Gr⫽105 with A⫽0.5 is half and counterclockwise in the left half. The temperature pro-
steady; transition to unsteady flow is observed experimentally just files for Gr⫽103 are very close to those of the conduction solu-
above Gr⫽105 . tion, indicating that convection is not important. Figure 3 shows
the flow visualization for A⫽0.5 and Gr⫽5000, revealing the ex-
istence of a nearly symmetric flow pattern. Note that this value of
Gr 共within experimental uncertainty兲 is less than the numerically
predicted critical value, Grc ⫽8930, discussed later. The slight de-
viation from perfect symmetry is attributed to the difficulty in
achieving perfectly symmetric experimental conditions.
For A⫽1.0 and Gr⫽104 , the increased buoyancy forces at this
higher value of Gr generate stronger counter rotating convective
cells, but the flow remains symmetric about the geometric mid-
plane 共results not shown here兲. The streamlines are qualitatively
similar to those for Gr⫽103 , but the temperature contours are
Fig. 1 Physical domain and boundary conditions displaced upward from their location at Gr⫽103 near the center of
Fig. 3 Symmetric experimental flow pattern for GrÄ5Ã103
and A Ä0.5
Fig. 4 Determination of Grc for each aspect ratio using maxi-

mum horizontal velocity at the geometric symmetry plane
determined by extrapolating to zero the square of the maximum

value of the horizontal velocity at the midplane for values of Gr
above the critical value as shown in Fig. 4. The values of Grc
obtained using this method are also reported on the figure. Grc is
found to decrease with decreasing A.
The existence of multiple solutions necessitates that particular
care be exercised in obtaining solutions above Grc , because both
symmetric and asymmetric solutions can be obtained depending
upon the solution approach. From past experience, if all aspects of
the solution technique are perfectly symmetric, then symmetric
solutions can be obtained at parameters above the pitchfork bifur-
cation point 共关15兴兲. However, these symmetric solutions are un-
stable and will evolve to a stable asymmetric solution if a finite
perturbation is applied. These finite perturbations may be a slight
Fig. 2 Streamline „upper… and temperature „lower… profiles for
tilting of the enclosure for a few iterations followed by a return to
GrÄ103 : „a… A Ä1.0; „⌬␺Ä0.0252, ⌬␪Ä0.2…, „b… A Ä0.5; „⌬␺
Ä0.0374, ⌬␪Ä0.2…, and „c… A Ä0.2; „⌬␺Ä0.0316, ⌬␪Ä0.2…
vertical, asymmetries imposed by using an asymmetric grid dis-
tribution, or the use of a solution algorithm that imposes slight
asymmetries in the results 共Gauss-Seidel iteration, for example兲.
For the cases considered here, if started from symmetric initial
the enclosure causing a local decrease in Nuc . It is noted that the conditions with no tilting of the enclosure, during iterative solu-
horizontal component of velocity is zero everywhere along the tions of the steady-state equations the flow would initially evolve
midplane for these symmetric results. For the other two aspect
toward a symmetric solution, reaching 共in some cases兲 residuals of
ratios, the flow at Gr⫽104 is not symmetric and is discussed in the
less than 10⫺5 . However, when Gr was above the critical value, as
next two sections.
the computations were continued the residual would start to rise
Pitchfork Bifurcation. As the Grashof number is increased and then decrease again, this time converging to one of the two
above a critical value the flow is observed to undergo a supercriti- stable asymmetric results. Similar behavior was seen in the tran-
cal pitchfork bifurcation, in which case one of two possible mirror sient cases run above Grc , where the solution would initially
image asymmetric solutions are obtained. For these asymmetric evolve towards a symmetric result, then deviate to an asymmetric
solutions, the horizontal velocity along the midplane of the tri- solution before reaching a steady state. It is thus concluded that
angle is nonzero. Thus, the branch point of the pitchfork can be above Grc , the asymmetric solutions in the triangular enclosure
Fig. 6 Experimental flow pattern for GrÄ104 and A Ä0.5
Fig. 5 Streamline „upper… and temperature „lower… profiles for

GrÄ104 : „a… A Ä0.5 „⌬␺Ä1.11, ⌬␪Ä0.2…, and „b… A Ä0.2 „⌬␺
Ä1.57, ⌬␪Ä0.2…
are stable to finite perturbations whereas the symmetric ones are

not. Del Campo et al. 关9兴, who considered an isosceles triangular
domain above Grc , did not find any asymmetric solutions. In light
of the nonuniform iterative convergence behavior observed for
these cases, one possibility to explain this fact might be that the
iterative convergence criteria used by del Campo et al. were too
large.
Flow and Temperature Field Above Grc . As Gr is in-
creased above Grc for the aspect ratio in question, the flow pattern
becomes increasingly asymmetric and the number of circulation
cells is observed to increase. As noted above, at Gr⫽104 and A
⫽1.0, the flow is below the critical value and remains symmetric.
However, for A⫽0.5 and 0.2, the flow is asymmetric 共Fig. 5兲. For
A⫽0.5 and Gr⫽104 共just above Grc 兲 as shown in Fig. 5共a兲, the
central plume is shifted slightly to one side of the midplane and
the clockwise 共right兲 circulation cell is larger than the other cell.
The temperature contours are shifted upward and spaced relatively
far apart near the base of the plume, indicating a reduction in heat
transfer at that location relative to the pure conduction case. The
temperature gradients are increased near the base where the cold
plumes falling from the upper surfaces impinge upon the base. For
the smaller aspect ratio A⫽0.2 and Gr⫽104 , many more circula-
tion cells and plumes exist, as seen in Fig. 5共b兲. By comparing the
streamline and temperature profiles of Fig. 5共b兲, it is clear that the
center circulation cell is rotating counterclockwise. The cells to
the left and right of this center cell alternate in direction of rota-
tion with decreasing strength. The experimental flow visualization
results for Gr⫽104 are provided in Fig. 6, and these results quali-
tatively agree quite well with the numerical results for A⫽0.5
shown in Fig. 5共a兲.
For all aspect ratios at Gr⫽105 共Fig. 7兲, a central circulation
cell exists with counterrotating cells to either side. In each case,
the regions of small temperature gradients near the base are dis-
placed away from the midplane along with the plume. For A
⫽1.0, one circulation cell dominates the other and the central
plume is shifted to one side, rises up to meet the cold sloping wall,
and continues upward toward the top of the triangle as seen in Fig. Fig. 7 Streamline „upper… and temperature „lower… profiles for
7共a兲. For A⫽0.5 with Gr⫽105 shown in Fig. 7共b兲, a central cir- GrÄ105 : „a… A Ä1.0 „⌬␺Ä3.34, ⌬␪Ä0.2…, „b… A Ä0.5 „⌬␺Ä4.93,
culation cell rotating clockwise exists near the midplane of the ⌬␪Ä0.2…, and „c… A Ä0.2 „⌬␺Ä6.73, ⌬␪Ä0.2…
Fig. 8 Experimental flow pattern for GrÄ105 and A Ä0.5
geometry with counterrotating cells to either side. The flow and

temperature profiles for the smaller aspect ratio A⫽0.2 are more
complex at Gr⫽105 , where several circulation cells are on either
side of the central one, and many plumes alternately rise and fall
throughout the domain, as seen in Fig. 7共c兲. 共It should be empha-
sized that the results shown are not unique, but are one of the two
possible mirror image solutions.兲 Experimental smoke visualiza-
tion results for Gr⫽105 are provided in Fig. 8 which agree quali-
tatively very well with the numerical results for the same condi-
tions provided in Fig. 7共b兲.
Heat Transfer. As noted above in the Introduction, the local
Nu 共dimensionless temperature gradient兲 is unbounded at the cor-
ners of the triangular geometry where the hot base meets the cold
side walls. Therefore, determination of an average Nu by a direct
integration of the dimensionless temperature gradient starting
from the closest node to the tip 共since the gradient is undefined at
the tip兲 would yield highly grid dependent results. The average Nu
would be increasingly dominated by the singularity as the grid is
refined. This detail has been poorly handled by most of the re-
searchers who have considered the problem numerically resulting
in grid-dependent results that cannot be directly compared. To
focus on the effect of the fluid motion on the heat transfer and to
avoid the issue of unbounded heat transfer at the tip region, a
convective Nusselt number, Nuc , is defined as the ratio of Nu at a
given Gr to Nu for the corresponding conduction solution 共Gr⫽0兲.
The Nusselt number here is computed by evaluating the dimen-
sionless temperature gradient on the wall at the finite element
Gauss points. By considering the heat transfer in this way, both
the local and average Nuc asymptotically approach unity as Gr is
decreased. Nuc thus represents the increase 共or local decrease if it
is less than unity兲 in heat transfer relative to the case for pure
conduction and converges both locally and in an average sense as
the grid is refined. Table 1 summarizes Nuc,avg along the base for
each aspect ratio as a function of Gr, and it is seen that decreasing
the aspect ratio increases Nuc,avg for a given Gr. This Nuc,avg is
computed by simply summing all of the local values for Nuc and
dividing by the number of values 共made possible since the Nuc
values are located at the Gauss points兲. The increase in Nuc with
decreasing A is attributed to the multicellular flow pattern de-
scribed above.
Effect of the Symmetry Assumption. To highlight the dif-
ferences in the local heat transfer depending on whether one as-
sumes a symmetry condition, computations were also performed
for selected cases using a symmetry assumption. Note that the Fig. 9 Nuc along the base for asymmetric and symmetric so-
solutions assuming symmetry used the same number of elements lutions at GrÄ105 „a… A Ä1.0, „b… A Ä0.5, and „c… A Ä0.2
along the base half-length as for the solutions not assuming flow
symmetry. Figure 9 shows the local Nuc across the base for both
Table 1 Average convective Nusselt numbers the symmetric and asymmetric cases at Gr⫽105 with A⫽1.0, 0.5,
and 0.2. Nuc drops below unity near X⫽0.3 in the asymmetric
A Gr⫽103 Gr⫽104 Gr⫽105 case with A⫽1.0, as seen in Fig. 9共a兲, where a rising plume is
located 共Fig. 7共a兲兲. The falling plumes, which impinge on the
1.0 1.0 1.07 1.80
0.5 1.0 1.20 2.19 base, cause a local increase in heat transfer and a clear increase in
0.2 1.0 1.28 2.48 the temperature gradients. This effect is also seen for A⫽0.5
共Figs. 9共b兲 and 7共b兲兲, where the number of upward plumes is
Table 2 Change in average Nuc for GrÄ105 and A Ä0.5 about 2.5 to 5.0 percent. The peak value of Nuc is greater by 6 to
12 percent for the asymmetric case compared to the symmetric
Segments Along the Base Nuc,avg Percent Change one. Thus, by assuming the flow to be symmetric about the geo-
80 2.252 2.99 metric symmetry plane, the predicted local heat transfer is much
160 2.201 0.658 different than for the simulations without symmetry. However, the
200 2.193 0.258 error in predicted overall heat transfer by assuming a symmetry
260 2.187 ¯ condition is relatively small.
Grid Independence Study. To ensure the accuracy of the
numerical results a grid independence study was performed. For
each grid and aspect ratio, proportional numbers of elements were
three, as shown by inspection of the temperature contours, or by used for each side of the enclosure according to the side lengths.
noting the number of minima in the plot of Nuc . As indicated in Important parameters such as the horizontal velocity component
Fig. 9共c兲, the flow pattern for A⫽0.2 is much more complex, and along the symmetry plane, Grc , and both local and average Nuc
the number of upward plumes is seen to be 6, as evident in either were calculated at several grid resolutions and compared. The
Figs. 9共c兲 or 7共c兲. grids for the results reported in this paper were chosen such that
In Fig. 9, the maximum value of Nuc is seen to be higher for the the percent change in Nuc,avg for each aspect ratio was less than
asymmetric cases. Additionally, the percent differences in Nuc for 0.5 percent. For an aspect ratio of 0.5, the chosen grid had 200
the asymmetric and symmetric cases shown in Fig. 9 can be more segments across the base, as shown in Table 2. Likewise, for A
than 250–550 percent depending upon location and aspect ratio ⫽1.0 and 0.2, the grids chosen had 120 and 260 segments across
due to the different locations of the convective cells in the asym- the base, respectively.
metric and symmetric cases. However, when integrating the local To verify that the grid resolutions based on this criterion were
values of Nuc for both the symmetric and asymmetric solutions, adequate for resolving local quantities, additional grid studies
the difference between Nuc,avg in each case is only found to be were performed for each of the cases included in this study. Typi-
cal results are shown for A⫽0.5 and Gr⫽105 in Figs. 10–11,
which show Nuc along the base and the nondimensional horizon-
tal velocity along the midplane of the triangle, respectively, for
each of the grids used. The local values of Nuc and the horizontal
velocity are observed to converge to one profile as the grid is
refined. Similar trends were observed for all other cases
considered.
To determine the sensitivity of Grc to grid resolution, the ex-
trapolation procedure described earlier was repeated for different
grids for A⫽1.0. For doubling the grid from 60 to 120 segments
along the base, the percent change in the critical Grashof number
was less than 0.1 percent indicating that the reported Grc is grid
independent for A⫽1.0. Based on the other grid tests performed,
it is expected that the reported values of Grc for A⫽0.5 and A
⫽0.2 are similarly grid independent.
Conclusions
Numerical results for laminar natural convection in an isosceles
triangular enclosure heated from below, considering the complete
physical domain 共i.e., using no symmetry assumptions兲, are pre-
Fig. 10 Nuc along the base for A Ä0.5, GrÄ105 using different sented for three aspect ratios. At low Gr, symmetric solutions are
grid resolutions obtained indicating that a symmetry assumption is valid. As Gr is
increased, a pitchfork bifurcation is observed in which two steady
asymmetric mirror image solutions can be obtained. Critical val-
ues of Gr have been determined for A⫽1.0, 0.5, and 0.2 with Grc
increasing as A increases. The local convective Nusselt numbers
along the base between asymmetric and symmetric cases can dif-
fer by up to 550 percent due to shifting of the convective cells, but
differences in the averaged quantities are no more than five per-
cent. All of the results reported in this paper are based on the
assumption that the flow is two-dimensional near the center of the
enclosure. Flow visualization studies provide validation of this
assumption and the numerically predicted occurrence of the pitch-
fork bifurcation for a geometry with A⫽0.5. As Gr is increased,
the flow will undoubtedly become three-dimensional and
unsteady.
Nomenclature
A ⫽ aspect ratio, H/L
Gr ⫽ Grashof number, g ␤ ⌬TH 3 / ␷ 2
Grc ⫽ critical Grashof number
L ⫽ half-length of the enclosure
Nu ⫽ Nusselt number, hH/k
Nuc ⫽ convective Nusselt number
Fig. 11 Horizontal velocity profile at the geometric symmetry Nuc,avg ⫽ average convective Nusselt number
plane for A Ä0.5, GrÄ105 using different grid resolutions TC ⫽ cold surface temperature
TH ⫽ hot surface temperature 关6兴 Ghassemi, M., and Roux, J. A., 1989, ‘‘Numerical Investigation of Natural
⌬T ⫽ temperature difference, T H – T C Convection Within a Triangular Shaped Enclosure,’’ Heat Transfer in Con-
vective Flows, R. K. Shah, ed., ASME, New York, pp. 169–175.
U ⫽ dimensionless velocity in the x-direction, uH/ ␷ 关7兴 Salmun, H., 1995, ‘‘Convection Patterns in a Triangular Domain,’’ Int. J. Heat
V ⫽ dimensionless velocity in the y-direction, v H/ ␷ Mass Transf., 38, pp. 351–362.
X ⫽ dimensionless x-coordinate, x/H 关8兴 Hasani, S. M. F., and Chung, B. T. F., 1997, ‘‘Laminar Natural Convection in
Y ⫽ dimensionless y-coordinate, y/H a Triangular Enclosure,’’ Proceedings of the ASME Ocean Engineering Divi-
␪ ⫽ dimensionless temperature, (T – T C )/(T H – T C ) sion, D. T. Valentine, and C. C. Jahnke, eds., ASME, New York, pp. 107–116.
关9兴 Del Campo, E. M., Sen, M., and Ramos, E., 1988, ‘‘Analysis of Laminar
Natural Convection in a Triangular Enclosure,’’ Numer. Heat Transfer, 13, pp.
References 353–372.
关10兴 Collatz, L., 1966, The Numerical Treatment of Differential Equations,
关1兴 Flack, R. D., Konopnicki, T. T., and Rooke, J. H., 1979, ‘‘The Measurement of
Springer-Verlag New York.
Natural Convective Heat Transfer in Triangular Enclosures,’’ ASME J. Heat
Transfer, 101, pp. 648–654. 关11兴 Flack, R. D., 1980, ‘‘The Experimental Measurement of Natural Convection
关2兴 Karyakin, Y. E., and Sokovishin, Y. A., 1985, ‘‘Unsteady Natural Convection Heat Transfer in Triangular Enclosures Heated or Cooled From Below,’’
in a Triangular Enclosure,’’ Fluid Dyn., 20, pp. 811–815. ASME J. Heat Transfer, 102, pp. 770–772.
关3兴 Karyakin, Y. E., Sokovishin, Y. A., and Martynenko, O. G., 1988, ‘‘Transient 关12兴 Poulikakos, D., and Bejan, A., 1983, ‘‘Natural Convection Experiments in a
Natural Convection in Triangular Enclosures,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 31, Triangular Enclosure,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 105, pp. 652–655.
pp. 1759–1766. 关13兴 FIDAP Reference Manuals, 1996, Fluent, Inc., Lebanon, NH.
关4兴 Akinsete, V. A., and Coleman, T. A., 1982, ‘‘Heat Transfer by Steady Laminar 关14兴 Moffat, R. J., 1982, ‘‘Contribution to the Theory of Single-Sample Uncertainty
Free Convection in Triangular Enclosures,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 25, pp. Analysis,’’ ASME J. Fluids Eng., 104, pp. 250–258.
991–998. 关15兴 Hill, R. W., and Ball, K. S., 1997, ‘‘Chebyshev Collocation Analysis of Axi-
关5兴 Poulikakos, D., and Bejan, A., 1983, ‘‘The Fluid Dynamics of an Attic symmetric Flow and Heat Transfer between Counter-Rotating Disks,’’ ASME
Space,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 131, pp. 251–269. J. Fluids Eng., 119, pp. 940–947.
Inverse Design Model for
J. R. Howell
e-mail: jhowell@mail.utexas.edu Radiative Heat Transfer
O. A. Ezekoye Inverse solution techniques are applied to the design of heat transfer systems where
radiation is important. Various solutions using inverse methods are demonstrated, and it
J. C. Morales is argued that inverse design techniques provide an alternative to conventional iterative
design methods that is more accurate and faster, and can provide a greatly improved first
estimate of a thermal design. This estimate can then be used as a trial design in more
complete thermal analysis programs for predicting system behavior, eliminating many
Austin, TX 78714-1063
faulty first design trials. 关S0022-1481共00兲02703-1兴
Keywords: Furnaces, Heat Transfer, Inverse, Radiation
Introduction Inverse Design

The presence of significant radiative transfer in high- The analytical/numerical methods for conventional thermal
temperature engineering systems greatly complicates the model- analysis developed in the past have most often focused on math-
ing process. Radiative energy transfer is inherently described by ematically well-behaved methods. These methods require one
integral terms. Introducing the radiative flux divergence makes the boundary condition to be prescribed on each boundary of the sys-
energy equation, which is necessary for thermal system modeling, tem, and the system geometry and properties must be given. The
into an integro-differential equation that is highly nonlinear. De- thermal behavior of the control volume can then be predicted. We
tailed first-principles design of these systems is thus difficult, and might define this class of analytical design methods as ‘‘forward’’
is only now becoming common because of the power of contem- solution techniques, where we proceed from a defined set of prop-
porary numerical methods and computer capacity. Conventional erties and conditions to predict system behavior.
design of complex thermal systems involving significant radiative In contrast, an inverse design methodology allows specification
transfer still relies to a great extent on experience and prior art. of the desired outcome of a design, and then determines the design
Such an approach requires specification of the system geometry, set 共or some portion of the design set兲 that will provide this out-
boundary conditions on each boundary and material properties. come. Inverse design shares some characteristics with inverse
These conditions are called the ‘‘assumed design set.’’ In contem- methods used in experimental methods, where a measurement at a
porary design, the design set is then used along with the governing boundary is used to infer conditions within the system or at an-
equations to predict system behavior. If the predicted behavior is other boundary as in 关1–12兴. However, inverse design has signifi-
satisfactory, then the design set is accepted; if not, some values cant differences that require modification of the methods devel-
within the design set are changed, and the prediction is repeated. oped for inverse experimental analysis.
Iteration proceeds in this way until a design set is achieved that Examples of inverse design problems are in 关13,14兴. These re-
satisfactorily meets the system requirements. searchers have examined how the transient thermal boundary con-
Modern simulation tools that solve the coupled equations of ditions on the exterior of a casting could be varied in order that
energy, mass, and momentum transfer including the effects of the freezing boundary within the casting could progress at a uni-
chemical reaction and radiative transfer in participating media can form rate and thus provide uniform grain structure and improved
provide accurate prediction of the behavior of environmental and
final castings.
energy systems. These tools require the input information noted
Here, we concentrate on providing an initial design set for
above as a design set; i.e., geometry, boundary conditions and
thermal systems and equipment when significant radiative transfer
properties, along with initial conditions if transient behavior is to
is present. That is, what is the best placement of energy sources
be predicted. The flexibility and accuracy of these sophisticated
共within a volume or on boundaries兲 or the best geometry for a
tools demands computer speed and capacity, and the cost of an
thermal system that will produce the desired output from the
accurate and detailed simulation for even a single design set can
thermal system. This type of design problem is usually steady-
be large. Typical design codes for commercial utility boilers that
state, multidimensional, and incorporates multiple modes of heat
include participating media may involve over 500,000 surface and
transfer.
volume elements for sufficient spatial resolution, and require so-
Inverse design sounds as if it is the perfect design tool. How-
lution of the coupled momentum, energy 共including the effects of
radiation in participating media兲, continuity, and chemical species ever, when inverse design is actually applied, an immediate diffi-
equations. Because of the time and cost of each of these simula- culty arises. The mathematical model for inverse design usually
tions, satisfactory final design may be limited to a choice from requires that the known conditions on one or more surfaces of the
among a small number of design sets. Clearly, the designer should system under study be overspecified; e.g., both temperature and
have the best possible initial design set so that the number of cases heat flux may be specified on the material passing through an
needed to achieve the desired design outcomes is minimized. annealing furnace. On one or more other surfaces, no boundary
Here, we examine inverse methods for obtaining an approxi- condition is initially specified; indeed, the objective is to deter-
mate initial design set for use in the sophisticated available design mine that boundary condition 共e.g., heater temperature or net ra-
tools. This will greatly improve the practical design of thermal diative flux兲 that will provide the conditions on the overspecified
and environmental systems, particularly those involving signifi- surface. Unfortunately, this type of model leads to formulations
cant radiative energy transfer. that are ill-conditioned mathematically; that is, the solutions from
inverse analysis may be multivalued, sensitive to small perturba-
tions in input values, and in general require more sophisticated
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Oct. 25, 1999; mathematical tools than are required for conventional forward so-
revision received, Apr. 19, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: P. Menguc. lutions. When radiative transfer is significant, the governing equa-
lutions that are susceptible to oscillations. Exact solution by ma-
trix inversion is usually not possible because the matrix of coef-
ficients is then nearly singular. In contrast, forward design of
radiative transfer problems requires solution of sets of Fredholm
integral equations of the second kind whose solutions are well
behaved. Further, for problems involving radiative transfer the
matrix A is usually full, in contrast to inverse problems that in-
volve only conduction or convection, where the matrix is sparse
or banded, allowing relatively fast solution algorithms to be used.
Solution Techniques for Inverse Problems With Radiation.

The use of direct matrix inversion, inverse Monte Carlo tech-
niques, the Tikhonov method, truncated singular value decompo-
Fig. 1 Geometry for an inverse radiative transfer problem sition 共TSVD兲, modified truncated singular value decomposition
共MTSVD兲, artificial neural networks, and the conjugate gradient
method have all been used to solve problems with the form simi-
lar to that encountered in inverse radiative design 共关15–17兴兲.
tions are integral or integral-differential equations. In their finite For forward problems, direct matrix inversion by Gaussian
difference form, these equations provide a set of coupled highly elimination, Cholesky, LU decomposition and QR factorization
nonlinear equations. When placed in matrix form, the radiative are widely used 共关18兴兲. Some inverse problems can be solved by
exchange among elements causes the matrix of coefficients to be direct matrix inversion over a limited range of parameters, or if a
full rather than tridiagonal or sparse as is common in the absence large error can be tolerated in the solution.
of radiative transfer. The extensive work on inverse analysis of conduction problems
An illustrative example of a simple inverse radiation problem is by Beck et al. 关19,20兴 has laid the groundwork for many solution
the rectangular enclosure shown in Fig. 1. techniques that can be applied to more general inverse problems.
Here, in a typical inverse design problem, both the heat flux and This work has been in cooperation with and has drawn upon a
temperature on surface 1 are specified, and the designer wishes to considerable body of work in Russia 共关20兴兲. Recent monographs
know the temperature distribution required on surface 3 to provide 共关21–24兴兲 have further explored techniques for solving inverse
these conditions. The surfaces are gray and diffuse, and no radia- problems that arise in property measurement, remote sensing,
tively participating medium is present within the enclosure. The J l structural dynamics, and conduction heat transfer.
is the radiosity 共emitted plus reflected radiant flux兲 leaving surface A rank revealing decomposition such as singular value decom-
i. When the net energy exchange equations for radiative transfer position 共SVD兲 allows the study of the degree of ill-conditioning
are written for an element on surface 1, the result is of linear systems. SVD is a matrix operation in which a matrix A
冕
4
Li is decomposed into a product of three matrices, U, W and V. U
q 1 共 x 兲 ⫺␧ 1 ␴ t 41 共 x 兲 ⫽␧ 1 兺
i⫽1 0
J i 共 ␰ i 兲 K 共 x, ␰ i 兲 dA i (1) and V are orthonormal; i.e., they possess the property that UT U
⫽VT V⫽I, where I is the identity matrix. The W is the diagonal
where the summation is over the bounding surfaces of the enclo- matrix composed of the singular values of the matrix A. Hansen
sure and the integration is over an individual bounding surface. 关24兴 describes details of the decomposition and software for car-
Because both the dimensionless temperature distribution T 1 (X) rying it through, along with a very clear discussion of the math-
and dimensionless total radiative flux distribution Q 1 (X) on sur- ematical background of SVD.
face 1 have been specified, the left-hand side of Eq. 共1兲 is there- The singular values w i form a nonnegative diagonal of W with
fore known. Equation 共1兲 thus has the characteristics of a Fred- decreasing numerical values, and examination of their relative
holm integral equation of the first kind, and its appearance in the magnitudes provides an important measure of whether A itself can
equation set for the inverse problem causes the problem to be be readily inverted. A need not be square to apply SVD, which
ill-conditioned. For forward problems, one and only one BC is adds greatly to the utility 共since we can examine behavior when
prescribed on each surface, and equations of this type do not equations and unknowns are unequal, i.e., rank deficient prob-
appear. lems兲. The ratio of the largest to the smallest singular values,
The kernel of the integral, K(x, ␰ i ) has the general form 共with w 1 /w N , where N is the rank of A, is called the condition number
of matrix A. The larger the condition number, the more difficult
no attenuating medium present兲 of K(x, ␰ t )⫽cos ␪l cos ␪l /␲S1⫺i2
,
will be conventional matrix inversion of A. If the equation set is
where ␪ is the angle between the line connecting a surface ele-
truly singular, one or more singular values will be zero indicating
ment on surface 1 and a surface element on surface i and the
the impossibility of direct solution by straightforward matrix in-
outward facing normal from these elements. The distance between
version of the complete matrix A.
the elements is S 1⫺i . If an absorbing-emitting, cold medium with
The availability and power of SVD is the basis for a number of
uniform properties is present between the elements, then the form
methods for treating ill-conditioned equation sets of the type that
given for the kernel is multiplied by exp(⫺aS1–i), where a is the
arise in inverse design, including truncated singular value decom-
linear absorption coefficient of the medium.
position 共TSVD兲 and modified TSVD. SVD may also be used as
For many physical systems the linear inverse problem resulting
an aid to interpreting the results and increasing the efficiency of
from discretization of the integral equations describing radiative
Tikhonov regularization. These methods, along with the applica-
exchange in the absence of conduction or convection can be
tion of the conjugate gradient approach, will now be discussed in
formulated in terms of a matrix operator A and a vector of un-
more detail.
knowns X,
Regularization. As a result of discretization, the set of integral
AX⫽b. (2)
equations describing radiative transfer has been transformed into a
In surface radiation problems, the vector X contains the un- set of linear algebraic equations. However, the ill-posed nature of
known radiosity distributions on all surfaces as well as the un- the system for the case of inverse design problems has not been
known temperature distribution on the Uk 共unknown兲 surface. addressed, and an infinite-dimensional 共continuous兲 ill-posed
Mathematically, inverse thermal design requires solving sets of problem has only been transformed into a discrete ill-posed prob-
equations that include Fredholm integral equations of the first lem. Hansen 关25兴 indicates that a discrete system AX⫽b is ill-
kind as shown in Eq. 共1兲. These are known to have multiple so- posed if the following criteria are satisfied:
1 The singular values of A decay gradually toward zero. cedure is stopped/halted before the high frequency components
2 The ratio of the largest to the smallest nonzero singular value are resolved or incipient divergence starts, a self-regularized so-
共condition number兲 of matrix A is large. lution is obtained 共关28兴兲.
The most popular regularization algorithm is the one known as
The first criterion indicates that there is no ‘‘nearby’’ problem Tikhonov regularization 共关26,27兴兲. This method is also called the
with a well-conditioned matrix of coefficients and with well- Phillips-Twomey or the constrained linear inversion method
determined rank. The second criterion similarly implies that ma- 共关18兴兲. In addition, methods based on singular value decomposi-
trix A is ill-conditioned, i.e., the solution is potentially unstable to tion 共SVD兲 have gained popularity among other direct methods.
perturbation in the data. These two criteria do not imply that a The use of SVD based methods offers several advantages since it
meaningful solution cannot be obtained, but that standard methods allows study of singular value spectrum of the matrix A, and,
such as Gaussian elimination, LU or QR factorization cannot be therefore, determination of the degree of ill-conditioning of the
used in a straightforward manner, particularly if a meaningful system under consideration.
共useful兲 solution is to be obtained. Instead, more elaborate meth- For inverse design, the best solution must be chosen based on
ods must be applied. Numerical methods that can solve this type some criterion; normally, this is some criterion for tradeoff be-
of problem are the so-called regularization methods. tween the perturbation error 共Eq. 共3兲兲 and the regularization error
Because of the gradual decay of the singular values of A, the 共Eq. 共4兲兲. However, this is not in itself sufficient for the designer.
discrete system is essentially undetermined. Therefore, it is nec- It is also necessary that the chosen solution meet two other design
essary to include additional information regarding the solution to conditions. First, the l 2 -norm based on direct comparison with the
stabilize the problem and to single out a useful and stable solution. prescribed input conditions must be within some allowable design
Even though there are many types of additional constraints that criterion. This must be met regardless of the value of the l 2 -norm
can be imposed on the solution, by far the most dominant is to of Eq. 共3兲 used in choice of the ‘‘best’’ solution from a particular
require that the l 2 -norm, or some other suitable norm, be small. In regularization method. Secondly, the chosen design solution must
addition, the constraint imposed by the system of equations, i.e., meet prescribed or heuristic conditions that the designer believes
AX⫽b, must be relaxed in order to accommodate the regularizing are appropriate, such as smoothness of solutions or solutions that
constraint. meet some other desirable conditions such as not exceeding a
The regularization process is thus an attempt to reduce the fluc- maximum materials temperature. That is, the designer may choose
tuations of the solution introduced by the ill-conditioned nature of a solution with a larger l 2 -norm based on comparison with the
the equations, which is called the perturbation error, while not prescribed input conditions if that solution has other desirable
introducing too much error through over-smoothing of the solu- attributes. Thus, the chosen design solution may differ from the
tion and thus introducing regularization error. Finding the best ‘‘best’’ regularized solution obtained by any of the methods to be
solution X쐓 that provides a reasonable tradeoff between these two discussed. This is a fundamental difference from experimentally
errors is the goal of most inverse solution methods. based inverse problems, where the goal is to find the very best
A measure of the perturbation error is the l 2 -norm of the so- solution that matches the measured input values.
lution, defined by We now examine the details of four methods for treating in-
l 2 共 X 쐓 兲 ⫽ 储 L共 X⫺X쐓 兲储 2 (3) verse problems made up of sets of linear algebraic equations. The
proofs of the mathematical characteristics of these methods are
where L is the smoothing operator used on the data 共usually the carefully laid out in the excellent monograph by Hansen 关24兴.
identity matrix or first or second derivative兲 and X is the required
design solution. If L is taken to be the identity matrix, then the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition. The use of SVD
l 2 -norm becomes the mean variance of the calculated solution and the examination of the set of singular values shows why the
relative to the imposed design requirement, and corresponds to matrix A is ill-conditioned. One use of this information is that it
zeroth-order regularization. If L is taken as the first or second allows us to find a problem that can be solved by simply truncat-
derivative operator, these correspond to first and second-order ing the set of singular values to a smaller set that has an accept-
regularization, respectively. able condition number. The corresponding matrix A* can then be
The regularization error is taken to be the residual norm of the generated, inverted to provide the inverted truncated matrix
solution, R, given by A* ⫺1 , and the solution
R⫽ 储 AX쐓 ⫺b储 2 . (4)
⫺1
쐓
If X ⫽X, then there is no regularization error as the exact and X쐓 ⫽A쐓 b (5)
regularized solution will be equal, and the matrix equation is ex-
actly satisfied; however, the more the solution is regularized by
introducing smoothing, the larger will be the residual norm R. can be generated. The solution X쐓 will not be exact, because some
The goal of the regularizing algorithm is thus to obtain a bal- information has been deleted by throwing away the smaller sin-
ance between minimizing the fluctuations in the solution as mea- gular values. However, the solution can be obtained, and it can be
sured by the l 2 -norm while simultaneously introducing the small- made well behaved if a sufficient number of small singular values
est possible residual norm. are truncated. The accuracy of the solution for X* is then found.
Since the introduction of the concept of regularization by The forward problem is solved by deleting one of the extra bound-
Tikhonov in the early 1960s 共关26,27兴兲, several methodologies ary conditions used in the inverse solution, and inserting X* as
have been developed to compute or estimate the solution of ill- the boundary condition on the boundary with no originally pre-
posed problems. Hansen 关25兴 presents a brief summary of several scribed condition. Either prescribed condition may be retained on
algorithms that can be classified into two groups: direct and itera- the design surface, but the known temperature is usually chosen
tive methods. Direct methods are those that reformulate the prob- because it is an easier condition to apply in forward solutions.
lem by introducing additional constraints and estimate the solution However, because forward solutions are unique, retaining either
by using standard linear solvers for the new problem. On the other condition will provide the same result in the forward calculation.
hand, iterative regularization is based on the inherent regularizing The result of the forward solution can then be compared with the
property of linear solvers when applied directly to the original required extra boundary condition.
system of equations. During initial iterations the low frequency The first step is to determine the singular value decomposition
components are resolved, while high frequency components asso- for A. A truncated solution is then computed by neglecting the n-p
ciated with the solution are found late during the iterative process smallest singular values of matrix A, constituting the truncated
or before the solution starts to diverge. Then, if the iterative pro- singular value decomposition 共TSVD兲 method. Thus,
p q q
vi uTi b
X* ⫽Xp ⫽ 兺
i⫽1 wi
. (6) ⌽ ␣ 共 X兲 ⫽ 储 AX⫺b储 22 ⫹ 兺
i⫽0
␣ 2i 储 Li 共 X⫺X0 兲储 22 ⫽R 2 ⫹ 兺 ␣ ⌿ 共 X兲 .
i⫽0
2
i i
(13)
Modified Truncated Singular Value Decomposition. An im-
provement to TSVD is the modified truncated singular value de- Therefore, the solution, X␣ is a function of the regularization
composition 共MTSVD兲 method 关29兴. This regularization algo- parameter ␣ and the initial solution X0 . Clearly, a large ␣ repre-
rithm is a two-step procedure. First, an initial approximation is sents a highly regularized solution with a small semi-norm as
obtained by computing a truncated singular value decomposition indicated by Eq. 共13兲, while a small ␣ has the reverse effect. That
共TSVD兲, i.e., discard singular values below a given threshold and is, the solution minimizes the residual 共first term on the right-hand
its corresponding singular vectors as for Eq. 共6兲. As a second step, side of Eq. 共13兲兲, but it is unstable to perturbations in the data.
a correction term to Xp is computed from the remaining singular Thus, the selection of ␣ is an important part of the regularization
values and its corresponding singular vectors, i.e., from the null process and it must be selected carefully.
space of matrix A. In this step, information concerning additional The selection of the initial estimate X0 is less critical, although
constraints or smoothing characteristics is introduced. it can be used in design to provide a better final solution. A choice
The correction term is calculated after solving the following of X0 ⫽0 introduces no bias; other choices and their effects are
least-squares problem for Zp discussed below.
Minimization of Eq. 共13兲 with respect to X implies that
min储 LVp Zp ⫺LXp ) 储 2 (7) q
where the matrix L represents the smoothing operator that is being ⌽ ␣⬘ 共 X兲 ⫽2AT 共 AX⫺b兲 ⫹2 兺 ␣ L L 共 X⫺X 兲 .
2
i
T
i i 0 (14)
applied on the solution and Zp ⫽(LVp ) T LXp . Here, a second de- i⫽0
冋册
rivative finite difference operator is used, i.e., L is given by At the minimum, ⌽ ␣⬘ should be zero, thus Eq. 共14兲 can be rear-
0 0 ranged as
q q
⫺2
兺兺 ␣ L LX .
1 1 T
A AX⫹ ␣ 2i LTl Ll X⫽AT b⫹ 2
i
T
l l 0 (15)
L⫽ • • • (8) i⫽0 i⫽0
1 ⫺2 1 For example, what is called standard Tikhonov regularization is

0 0 the case when the series is terminated at q⫽0, thus Li becomes
the identity matrix I. That is,
and the matrix Vp is formed by the remaining n-p singular vectors,
i.e., 共 AT A⫹ ␣ 20 I兲 X⫽AT b⫹ ␣ 20 X0 (16)
Another example is the second-order regularization method, for
Vp ⬅ 关 vp⫹1 , . . . ,vn 兴 . (9) which q⫽2, ␣ 0 ⫽ ␣ 1 ⫽0, leaving ␣ 2 as the only regularization
Then, the correction term is calculated by parameter.
XC, p ⫽Vp Zp (10) 共 AT A⫹ ␣ 22 L2 T L2 兲 X⫽AT b⫹ ␣ 22 L2 T L2 X0 (17)
The MTSVD or L-order regularized solution is obtained by sub- To complete the regularization procedure, the regularization pa-
tracting the correction term from the initial estimate, that is rameter ␣ has to be determined. There are several ways to find the
optimal value 共关25兴兲.
XL, p ⫽Xp ⫺XC, p . (11) The L-curve is perhaps the most convenient graphical tool for
analysis of discrete ill-posed problems. It is a plot of the semi-
This procedure is then repeated for the next larger value of p, and norm used as a side constraint, 储 Li (X⫺X0 ) 储 , versus the corre-
the procedure is continued until the solution converges to a sponding residual norm, 储 AX-b储 , for different values of the regu-
smooth result and further increases in p result in the appearance of larization parameter ␣. In this way, the L-curve displays the
unacceptable oscillations in the solution. The initial value of p is compromise between minimization of both quantities. This curve
usually the one for which the distribution of singular values starts is very important since it divides the first quadrant into two re-
to decay rapidly. gions. Hansen 关25兴 indicates that it is impossible to construct any
We have found that MTSVD works well for radiative surface regularized solution that corresponds to a point below the
interchange problems. However, for more complex systems with L-curve; therefore, any regularized solution either lies on or above
volume-volume interchange as for participating media, it is diffi- the L-curve. When plotted in log-log scale, the curve almost al-
cult to assemble the equations in such a way as to allow straight- ways has a characteristic L-shaped appearance with a distinct cor-
forward application of the minimization step. ner separating the vertical and the horizontal part of the curve.
This corner corresponds to the near optimal value for the regular-
Tikhonov Regularization. Solution of ill-posed problems be-
ization parameter ␣. Unfortunately, the present study has found
gan after the pioneering works of A. N. Tikhonov in the 1960s
that the solutions corresponding to this corner have undesirable
共关21,26,27兴兲. His method of regularization considerably broadened
oscillations and in some circumstances some components of the
the bounds of effective practical use of ill-posed problems in
solution vector become negative. Since these components repre-
physical sciences. The main idea of the Tikhonov regularization
sent the outgoing radiative energy, which is defined as positive,
method is to introduce a side constraint in order to stabilize or
negative values are unacceptable on physical grounds, although
regularize the problem. Usually, this side constraint is linear, and
they may provide a mathematically acceptable solution. For larger
allows the inclusion of an initial estimate, if available. The side
values of the regularization parameter, the solution has less or no
constraint involves a norm that can be defined as
oscillations, but at the expense of a larger residual error.
⌿ i 共 X兲 ⫽ 储 Li 共 X⫺X0 兲储 22 (12) Note that if the initial solution estimate X0 is taken as exactly
equal to the solution X, then the value of ␣ becomes indeterminate
where Li approximates the ith derivative operator and X0 is an 共see Eqs. 共13–15兲兲. In that case, the solutions from Tikhonov
initial 共biased兲 solution estimate. For i⫽0, the identity operator is regularization reduce to the solutions of Eq. 共2兲. Because these
assumed. The Tikhonov regularization method minimizes the solutions are known to be unstable, a further regularization, per-
functional ⌽ ␣ (X), which is defined as haps through TSVD 共Eq. 共6兲兲, must be applied to obtain a solu-
tion. The condition X0 ⫽X is, of course, an unlikely scenario, as 储 AT r共 n 兲储 22
the exact solution is not known a priori. If it is, there is no reason ␤ n⫽
to be solving the problem. 储 AT r共 n⫺1 兲储 22
Because of the nondimensional form of the relations used here,
the values of X0 should have certain attributes in order to bias the
regularization result toward a useful design solution. Because of d共 n 兲 ⫽AT r 共 n 兲 ⫹ ␤ n d共 n⫺1 兲
the nondimensionalized forms for the temperatures, radiosities, or
radiative fluxes on heater surfaces, X0 is expected to be positive The solution norm at each iteration 储 X( n ) 储 2 will increase mono-
and of order unity, and we also strive to have solutions that are tonically with n, and the residual norm 储 r( n ) 储 2 will decrease
smooth. In the absence of other information, a value of X0 ⫽ 关 1 兴 is
monotonically with n if X( 0 ) ⫽0. This behavior can be used to
a reasonable choice.
establish an L-curve and provide a criterion for stopping the itera-
To determine the value of the regularization parameter ␣ for
tive process.
standard Tikhonov regularization, Eq. 共13兲 must be solved for
several values of ␣. This process is time-consuming and can be Prior Research on Inverse Radiative Design. Recent re-
avoided by using the singular value decomposition of matrix A search has centered on inverse solutions of design problems where
共关29兴兲. The first step is to determine the singular value decompo- radiative transfer is dominant. Recent reviews of the literature are
sition for A, that is to compute the left singular vectors u, the available on enclosure problems where no participating medium is
singular values w i and the right singular vectors v. So A can be present 共关15兴兲, or where a participating medium is present 共关17兴兲.
expressed as A zonal method is used in 关30兴 to formulate the radiative trans-
n fer in a rectangular enclosure containing an isothermal absorbing-
emitting medium, and the characteristics 共temperature and heat
A⫽UWVT ⫽ 兺 uwv
i⫽1
i
T
i i (18)
flux distributions兲 on the Uk surface were found. The Jacobi and
Gauss-Seidel iterative solution methods were used, with the
where n is the total number of unknown radiosities. Then, a solu- former providing the more stable and accurate results.
tion for a fixed ␣ can be computed by introducing the filters f i , TSVD was used to solve some interesting two-dimensional fur-
which can be evaluated using nace design problems, and found to work well 共关31兴兲. Two con-
straints 共net radiative flux and temperature distributions兲 were im-
w 2i
f i⫽ (19) posed on all surface boundaries, and the volumetric energy
wi ⫹␣2
2
generation rate distribution in the medium necessary to satisfy
those constraints was sought. Radiative equilibrium was invoked
Thus, the regularized solution for a fixed ␣, X␣ , can be computed
in some of the medium volume elements in order to make the
by
number of equations and unknowns equal. Then, the number of
n n volume elements where radiative equilibrium was invoked was
vi uTi b wi
X␣ ⫽ 兺
i⫽1
fi
wi
⫽ 兺 w ⫹␣
i⫽1
2
i
2 vi uTi b (20) reduced, so the number of unknowns was larger than the number
of equations, and the TSVD provided a solution that minimized
After a solution for a fixed regularization parameter is obtained, the sum of the squares of the medium element temperatures. As
additional solutions can computed by only recomputing the filters the number of unknowns became still greater, oscillations were
f i and the matrix multiplications involved in Eq. 共20兲. found in the solutions.
In 关17兴, an inverse problem was solved in which all boundaries
Conjugate Gradient Method. The conjugate gradient method except one were adiabatic; the remaining boundary was a TQ
is an iterative technique for producing regularized solutions that boundary with emissivity of 0.5. The required medium tempera-
avoids the explicit decomposition of the matrix A. Matrix decom- ture and source distributions were found that provided these given
positions such as SVD are inherently time-consuming for large boundary conditions. TSVD was used for the inversion.
matrices, but are an inherent part of the TSVD, MTSVD and Various investigators 共关32–35兴兲 have used the modified trun-
Tikhonov methods. Therefore, conjugate gradient solutions are cated singular value decomposition method 共MTSVD兲. The
often the method of choice for multidimensional problems. We implementation of MTSVD for three-dimensional configurations
shall see that the conjugate gradient approach offers particular showed that if a large number of surfaces is used in the compu-
advantages for multimode problems where solutions to nonlinear tations, then TSVD and MTSVD require considerable memory
equation sets are required. Hansen 关24兴 points out that the opera- storage and computer time to handle the required singular value
tions used in conjugate gradient regularization 共CGR兲 lend them- decomposition 共SVD兲.
selves to parallelization. The discrete ordinates method along with a conjugate gradient
The number of iterations performed, n, acts as the regulariza- approach was used to find the net source distribution in an
tion parameter 共关24兴 pg. 142兲, as the iterations serve to filter the absorbing-emitting-scattering medium contained in a two-
higher frequency oscillations in the solution. Thus, a series of dimensional enclosure 共关36兴兲. Measured boundary intensities at
regularized solutions is automatically produced during the the boundary midpoints were used as input to the inverse problem.
solution—a boon for the designer, who can choose among them Although this is not an application of inverse techniques to ther-
based on other criteria than simply taking the solution with the mal design, it demonstrates the usefulness of the conjugate gradi-
smallest l 2 -norm. ent technique in inverse problems.
If the initial guess for the CGR algorithm is taken as X( 0 ) ⫽0, A detailed study of inverse design techniques was carried out in
the auxiliary vector d has starting value d( 0 ) ⫽AT ⫺r( 0 ) , and the 关34兴, concentrating in particular on a comparison of the MTSVD
residual vector is defined as r( n ) ⫽b⫺AX( n ) so that r( 0 ) ⫽b and Tikhonov methods for two and three-dimensional enclosure
⫺AX( 0 ) , then the CGR algorithm that is stable for inverse prob- problems with an absorbing-emitting medium.
lems is given by the following five steps 共关24兴兲: In 关32,37兴, MTSVD along with the Monte Carlo-based READ
method 共关38兴兲 for computing exchange areas for the Hottel zone
储 AT r共 n⫺1 兲储 22 method were used to solve inverse problems. One practical prob-
␣ n⫽ lem was the temperature distribution needed for heaters to obtain
储 Ad共 n⫺1 兲储 22
a uniform heat flux and temperature on the material on the bottom
X共 n 兲 ⫽X共 n⫺1 兲 ⫹ ␣ n d共 n⫺1 兲 of an industrial furnace.
Tikhonov regularization was used on an inversely posed prob-
r共 n 兲 ⫽r共 n⫺1 兲 ⫺ ␣ n Ad共 n⫺1 兲 (21) lem to optimize a furnace design 共关39兴兲. The author noted the
existence of nonphysical 共negative兲 radiosities for certain configu-
rations, and also noted that greater regularization was required as
the grid resolution was increased.
Inverse Solutions
We have investigated the general problem posed in Fig. 1 in
some detail. We examined the effects of boundary condition
choices and parameter variations on the solutions. We then con-
sidered the choice of solution methodology on the results. Finally
we investigated the effects of grid choice and on the overall ac-
curacy of the design. The tradeoffs naturally present between ac-
curacy in achieving the desired design versus generation of non-
physical designs are discussed.
Before discussing the inverse problem, solutions are given for
the forward problem for dimensionless temperatures T⫽t/t ref
specified on the enclosure as T top⫽T 3 ⫽2, T 2 ⫽T 4 ⫽1.5, and T 1
⫽T bottom⫽1.0, all surfaces black, and an aspect ratio A⫽h/w
⫽0.5. The dimensionless net radiative flux Q 1 (X)⫽q net(x)/ ␴ t ref
4
on the bottom surface was found. The result for this traditional
forward problem is shown in Fig. 2, for various numbers of ele-
ments N on the surfaces. For 20 or more elements on each surface,
the results are essentially unchanged, as confirmed by computing
the l 2 -norm as a function of number of increments.
Fig. 3 Temperature distribution on top surface of black rect-
Now, a series of inverse problems is solved using second order angular enclosure for various side-wall temperatures, T 1
Tikhonov regularization in which the net flux on surface 1 as Ä T bottomÄ1.0, imposed net dimensionless radiative flux Q 1 „ X …
found by the forward solution, Fig. 2, is imposed, while varying from Fig. 2, aspect ratio A Ä h Õ w Ä0.5
other conditions. For example, Fig. 3 shows the temperatures on
surface 3 found by inverse solution when the temperatures on the
two side walls are changed from the original value of 1.5. For the tions, but is approximate. It was chosen by examining the solu-
value of T 2 ⫽T 4 ⫽1.5, the original condition of T 3 (X)⫽2 is re- tions for a range of ␣ values, and noting when oscillations begin
covered, as expected. However, as the side-wall temperatures are to appear.
lowered, the temperature distribution on the top surface must vary The solutions shown in Fig. 3 would be very difficult to obtain
to compensate and provide the necessary radiative flux on the using iterative forward solutions, but are shown by Fig. 4 to pro-
bottom surface. vide heat flux values very near to the imposed condition 共gener-
The results of Tikhonov regularization depend on the choice of ally within one percent兲. Similar solutions have been obtained for
the regularization parameter ␣. In Fig. 4, the accuracy of the heat various imposed emissivity values on the side walls 共关35兴兲.
flux prediction is shown as a function of this parameter for the Similar solutions to those produced by the Tikhonov method
cases of different wall temperatures. The error in the predicted can be generated using other inversion techniques. A comparison
and imposed radiative flux becomes greater as the imposed side of predictions by different solution methods is shown in Fig. 5 for
wall temperatures deviate more from the original forward prob-
lem. The line separating the regions marked ‘‘oscillations’’ and
‘‘over-regularized’’ is derived from the L-curves for these solu-
Fig. 4 Error in predicted heat flux on bottom surface versus

regularization parameter ␣ using temperature distributions on
Fig. 2 Net dimensionless radiative flux Q 1 „ X …Ä q net„ x …Õ ␴ t ref
4
top surface of black rectangular enclosure for various side-
on bottom surface of black rectangular enclosure with T top wall temperatures from Fig. 4, T 1 Ä T bottomÄ1.0, imposed net di-
Ä T 3 Ä2, T 2 Ä T 4 Ä1.5, and T 1 Ä T bottomÄ1.0, aspect ratio A Ä h Õ w mensionless radiative flux Q 1 „ X … from Fig. 2, aspect ratio A
Ä0.5 Ä h Õ w Ä0.5
Fig. 5 Comparison of predicted top surface temperature T 3 „ X … in square en-
closure by 3 methods
an inverse radiative heat transfer problem. In this problem the ment and control. In design, any solution that provides the desired
unknown nondimensional temperature, T 3 (X), on the Uk top sur- outcome may be acceptable, and the designer may pick the one
face is to be predicted in a square 共two-dimensional兲 enclosure that is simplest to implement.
with the bottom surface specified as the design surface. There is The inversion methodology used for the base transparent case
no participating medium and all surfaces are diffuse-gray and can be applied to a problem in which an absorbing cold isothermal
have an emissivity of 0.9. Each surface is segmented into 20 in- medium at T⫽0 and optical thickness ␶ ⫽ah is placed in the
crements. Side walls are at T 2 ⫽T 4 ⫽1.5, the bottom wall is at enclosure. Again, the side walls are at T 2 ⫽T 4 ⫽1.5, the heat flux
T 1 ⫽1.0 and has a parabolic dimensionless heat flux distribution on bottom surface 1 is as shown in Fig. 2, and we wish to deter-
Q 1 (X)⫽3.2X 2 ⫺3.2X⫺6.8. These solutions all have less than one mine the temperature distribution on the top surface, T 3 (X). The
percent maximum difference from the prescribed Q 1 (X). results are in Fig. 6, and the accuracy of the solution is in Fig. 7.
The Tikhonov 0th order solution gives good agreement with As the optical thickness increases, the attenuation by the me-
both the conjugate gradient method with eight iterations and the dium requires greater and greater temperatures on the top surface
truncated singular value decomposition 共TSVD兲 with p singular to provide the necessary radiative flux to the bottom surface.
values greater than 10⫺2 . If we add two more iterations to the CG Again, these solutions would be quite tedious to obtain using it-
method and retain additional singular values greater than 10⫺3 in erative forward solutions. Figure 7 shows that the accuracy of the
the TSVD, the solutions are slightly more accurate, but give a inverse solutions becomes poorer as the attenuation 共optical thick-
different shape and possibly a less desirable 共less smooth兲 design ness兲 becomes large. Note that the functional dependence of the
solution. Figure 5 points out an important distinction between
inverse problems applied to design and those in property measure-
Fig. 7 Error in predicted heat flux on bottom surface versus

regularization parameter ␣ using temperature distributions on
Fig. 6 Temperature distribution on top surface of black rect- top surface of black rectangular enclosure for various medium
angular enclosure containing a gray cold gas with optical thick- optical thicknesses from Fig. 6, T 1 Ä T bottomÄ1.0, imposed
ness ␶ Ä ah ; T 1 Ä T bottomÄ1.0, imposed net dimensionless radia- net dimensionless radiative flux Q 1 „ X … from Fig. 3, aspect ratio
tive flux Q 1 „ X … from Fig. 3, aspect ratio A Ä h Õ w Ä0.5 A Ä h Õ w Ä0.5
Fig. 8 Error in predicted dimensionless heat flux distribution Q 1 „ X … for
various levels of surface grid refinement
error on the regularization parameter is different from the trans- procedure for the particular problem. As previously noted, solu-
parent cases in the participating cases. Physically, as the optical tions to ill-conditioned systems are extremely sensitive to pertur-
thickness increases, the energy from the top wall is greatly attenu- bations in the input parameters and roundoff errors in the compu-
ated before affecting the bottom wall and has smaller influence on tational procedure. Improper selection of the solution
the bottom surface. This results in greater uncertainty in the top methodology or any number of other factors 共e.g., over-
wall temperature results. Similar solutions were obtained by using regularization, grid choice, etc.兲 may generate a nonphysical so-
the MTSVD method 共关35兴兲. lution. It is important to distinguish between the two possibilities
for creating nonphysical solutions. It will be valuable to develop
Grid Effects. As with all numerical methods, tradeoffs also an approach that is 共a兲 independent of solution methodology and
exist for inverse problems among grid size, relative error and 共b兲 will identify and eliminate problem specifications that have no
computational costs. Unlike other numerical methods, the inter- physical solutions.
play between these parameters in inverse solutions is not well
understood or characterized. As an example, Fig. 8 shows the Three-Dimensional Solutions. The numerical techniques de-
error in the heat flux on the design surface based on predicted scribed and used in previous sections can be applied to problems
surface 3 temperatures. The error initially decreases with increas- in three-dimensional enclosures. As previously noted, it is not
ing grid resolution and then approaches a constant error value unusual to use 500,000 computational elements in a three-
independent of further resolution. This is in contrast to forward dimensional forward design of an industrial furnace. It is most
problems where the total error tends to decrease with increased likely that an inverse design tool that extends the techniques
grid resolution until the errors reach the machine error limits. It shown above would be used early in the design stage of a furnace
appears that roundoff errors from the inversion process 共i.e., regu- or heater system to specify approximate heater conditions that
larization兲 become larger than truncation errors very quickly in could be refined further with detailed forward calculations. In
the inverse formulation. general then, we would assume that a relatively coarse grid
would be used for the inverse solution and that a finer grid would
Existence of Solutions. Nonphysical results may be gener- be used in the forward cycle of the design project to make de-
ated in two fundamentally different ways when solving an inverse
problem. First, unlike inverse analysis of experimental data where
a boundary measurement is used to infer physical properties or
other system conditions, it is possible to pose conditions 共the de-
sign set兲 for a design problem that have no physical solution. In
such cases, the overall problem formulation cannot be satisfied
without the ‘‘solution’’ predicting nonphysical results such as
negative absolute temperatures, negative radiosities, etc.
In Fig. 9 an example of the generation of nonphysical results
is shown. A rectangular enclosure with aspect ratio A has a sur-
face at the top with unknown thermal conditions and a design
surface at the bottom. The aspect ratio of this enclosure is varied
from 0.5 to 0.7. For a fixed pre-specified error criterion 共based on
the ability of the predicted solution to satisfy the design condi-
tions兲, the predicted radiosity distribution on the top surface be-
gins to oscillate at larger aspect ratios, and takes negative values
at the edges. The radiosity, composed of emitted plus reflected
radiation, must be positive in a real system. Physical results can
be generated for the 0.7 aspect ratio if the error criterion is sig-
nificantly relaxed 共curve with the x markers兲. These results imply
that for some cases, a design solution cannot be found within a
specified tolerance without the predicted unknown solution be-
coming nonphysical.
The other way that nonphysical results may be generated in Fig. 9 Radiosity distribution along unknown surface with ge-
inverse analysis is through an inappropriate choice of solution ometry aspect ratio A Ä w Õ h as a parameter
Fig. 10 Temperature profiles on the interior surfaces of a radiantly heated process furnace enclosing a transparent
medium by inverse analysis. All surfaces adiabatic except upper half of left end „the heater… and the bottom surface,
which is at uniform temperature and given heat flux distribution. Heater temperature profiles are for cases when the
bottom surface emissivity is varied as shown.
tailed modifications. By adopting a coarse-grid-based inverse so- Thus, Morale’s results provide a reasonable guide. He shows that,
lution, the relative computational cost of the inversion process is for all cases studied, between 1.9 and 3.5 forward solutions could
manageable. be carried out per inverse MTSVD solution, and between 2.8 and
Shown in Fig. 10 is a three-dimensional rectangular enclosure 5.5 against Tikhonov. It is unlikely that accurate solutions could
with no participating medium. The radiative heater is on the upper be obtained with so few forward iterations; in addition, the mul-
half of the left-hand end of the enclosure. It is desired to maintain tiple solutions available from the inverse approach would be
the bottom surface at prescribed heat flux and dimensionless tem- missed.
perature of 1.0. All other surfaces except the bottom and top-left-
end are adiabatic. The computed surface temperature profiles re-
quired on the heater surface and resulting on the other enclosure
surfaces are shown for various emissivities on the bottom surface. Conclusions
This three-dimensional calculation was performed on an IBM Inverse design techniques as outlined in this paper hold the
RS6000 computer system and required two to five minutes of promise of providing a good initial design that can then be more
CPU time per case. This example shows the power of inverse carefully analyzed by conventional detailed prediction of perfor-
design in the design process, as using forward solutions to deter- mance. This should greatly reduce the cost involved in the con-
mine the correct temperature distributions for achieving the de- ventional process, and may become a useful tool among the skills
sired conditions on the bottom surface would be extremely te- of future designers. Inverse design techniques may also produce a
dious. For problems with participating media, the number of better final design in many cases because the conditions assumed
elements and the matrix size become much larger than for this for final traditional design can be much closer to the optimum set.
surface radiation problem. Some of the inversion techniques may The development of inverse design methods for thermal fluid
become intractable in this case because the matrices are full or systems will represent a significant departure in the design process
nearly full, and matrix operations such as SVD become very time- from the present approaches. There are many hurdles to be cleared
consuming. before both designers and researchers in the thermal fluid area
An important consideration is the relative time to generate a apply inverse methods to the wide range of system design
forward solution compared with an inverse solution. For example, problems that exist. It is first necessary to bridge a gap between
if a few hundred forward solutions can be carried out in the same the theoretical developments in the mathematics of inverse
time as an inverse solution, then inverse solution for design be- methods and applications to real engineering systems. Following
comes impractical, as an iterative forward solution can be done that, issues such as accuracy, grid dependence, and constraints
more cheaply in terms of computer time. Morales 关35兴 compared that are relevant to engineers must be adequately documented and
the time for the forward, MTSVD and Tikhonov solutions for the resolved.
problem described in Figs. 1–5, using 100 through 800 surface We believe that the design process is almost always better ap-
nodes. These two methods are the slowest of the four methods proached by an inverse technique; indeed, design would probably
outlined in this paper; TSVD is generally faster than MTSVD, and have been developed along these philosophical lines in the past
the conjugate gradient approach is faster than the other three. except for the mathematical problems inherent in inverse analysis,
and the development of inverse design methods for thermal fluid References
systems involving significant radiation represents an important de- 关1兴 Farag, I. H., 1979, ‘‘Temperature Profiles in Combustion Gases by Inversion:
sign alternative to the present approaches. Review and Approach,’’ ASME Paper 79-HT-21, ASME, New York.
关2兴 Matthews, L. K., Viskanta, R., and Incropera, F., 1984, ‘‘Development of
Inverse Methods for Determining Thermophysical Properties of High-
Temperature Fibrous Materials,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 27, No. 4, pp.
Acknowledgments 487–495.
关3兴 Wu, W. J., and Mulholland, G. P., 1989, ‘‘Two-Dimensional Inverse Radiation
The authors acknowledge the support of IHI, Inc. and the Texas Heat Transfer Analysis Using Monte Carlo Techniques,’’ Heat Transfer Phe-
Higher Education Coordinating Board 共Grant ARP-218兲. nomena in Radiation, Combustion and Fires, R. K. Shah, ed., ASME, New
York.
关4兴 Lin, J.-D., and Tsai, J.-H., 1991, ‘‘Comparison of P1 and S-P Two Flux Ap-
proximations in Inverse Scattering Problems,’’ ASME Paper 91-WA-HT-13,
ASME, New York.
Nomenclature 关5兴 Subramaniam, S., and Mengüç, M. P., 1991, ‘‘Solution of the Inverse Radia-
tion Problem for Inhomogeneous and Anisotropically Scattering Media Using
a ⫽ radiative linear absorption coefficient, m⫺1 a Monte Carlo Technique,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 34, No. 1, pp. 253–266.
A ⫽ area, m2; aspect ratio, h/w 关6兴 Li, H. Y., and ÖziŞik, M. N., 1992, ‘‘Estimation of the Radiation Source Term
A ⫽ matrix of coefficients With a Conjugate-Gradient Method of Inverse Analysis,’’ J. Quant. Spectrosc.
Radiat. Transf., 48, No. 3, pp. 237–244.
A* ⫽ truncated matrix of coefficients 关7兴 Tsai, J.-H., 1993, ‘‘Inverse Scattering Problem With Two Flux Methods,’’ Int.
b ⫽ vector of known quantities Commun. Heat Mass Transfer, 20, pp. 585–596.
d ⫽ auxiliary vector in conjugate gradient algorithm, 关8兴 Hendricks, T. J., and Howell, J. R., 1994, ‘‘Inverse Radiative Analysis to
Eq. 共21兲. Determine Spectral Radiative Properties Using the Discrete Ordinates
Method,’’ Proc. 10th International Heat Transfer Conference, Vol. 2, Institute
F ⫽ radiation configuration factor of Chemical Engineers, Rugby, U.K., pp. 75–80.
h ⫽ distance between parallel plates, m 关9兴 Jones, M. R., Curry, B. P., Brewster, M. Q., and Leong, K. H., 1994, ‘‘Inver-
I ⫽ identity matrix sion of Light-Scattering Measurements for Particle Size and Optical Constants:
i ⫽ singular value index Theoretical Study,’’ Appl. Opt., 33, No. 18, pp. 4025–4041.
关10兴 Jones, M. R., Tezuka, A., and Yamada, Y., 1995, ‘‘Thermal Tomographic
J ⫽ radiosity, W/m2 Detection of Inhomogeneities,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp. 969–975.
K ⫽ kernel of integral equation 关11兴 McCormick, N. J., 1997, ‘‘Analytical Solutions for Inverse Radiative Transfer
L ⫽ smoothing operator Optical Property Estimation,’’ Proc. ASME Heat Transfer Division, Vol. 3,
N ⫽ number of enclosure surface elements ASME, New York, pp. 367–371.
关12兴 Kudo, K., Kuroda, A., Ozaki, E., and Oguma, M., 1997, ‘‘Estimation of Ab-
n ⫽ number of iterations sorption Coefficient Distribution in Two-Dimensional Gas Volume by Solving
p ⫽ number of retained singular values Inverse Radiative Property Value Problem,’’ Radiative Transfer-II: Proc. Sec-
q ⫽ energy flux, W/m2 ond Int. Symp. on Radiation Transfer, M. P. Menguç, ed., Begell House, New
R ⫽ residual norm, Eq. 共3兲 York.
关13兴 Frankel, J. I., and Keyhani, M., 1996, ‘‘A New Approach for Solving Inverse
r ⫽ residual vector, Eq. 共21兲 Solidification Design Problems,’’ Numer. Heat Transfer, Part B, 30, No. 2, pp.
Q ⫽ dimensionless radiative energy flux, q rad / ␴ t ref
4
161–177.
t ⫽ absolute temperature, K 关14兴 Yang, G. Z., and Zabaras, N., 1998, ‘‘The Adjoint Method for an Inverse
T ⫽ normalized temperature, t/t ref Design Problem in the Directional Solidification of Binary Alloys,’’ J. Com-
put. Phys., 140, pp. 432–452.
U ⫽ orthogonal matrix 关15兴 França, F., Morales, J. C., Oguma, M., and Howell, J. R., 1998, ‘‘Inverse
V ⫽ orthogonal matrix Design of Radiating Systems Dominated by Radiative Transfer,’’ Radiative
u, v ⫽ column vectors for orthonormal vectors used in SVD Transfer II:-Proc. Second Int. Symp. Radiative Heat Transfer, M. P. Mengüç,
w ⫽ singular value; width of plate, m ed., Begell House, New York.
关16兴 Franca, F., Morales, J. C., Oguma, M., and Howell, J. R., 1998, ‘‘Inverse
W ⫽ matrix of singular values Design of Thermal Systems With Radiation,’’ Invited keynote lecture, Heat
X ⫽ solution vector Transfer 1998, Proc. 11th Int. Heat Transfer Conf., Vol. I, J. S. Lee, ed.,
X* ⫽ regularized solution vector Taylor and Francis, New York, pp. 213–221.
X ⫽ dimensionless coordinate position, x/h 关17兴 França, F., Morales, J. C., Oguma, M., and Howell, J. R., 1998, ‘‘Inverse
Radiation Heat Transfer Within Enclosures With Participating Media,’’ Proc.
Y ⫽ dimensionless coordinate position, y/h 1998 11th Int. Heat Trans. Conf., J. S. Lee, ed., Taylor and Francis, New
x ⫽ coordinate distance, m York, Vol. 7, pp. 433–438.
y ⫽ coordinate distance, m 关18兴 Press, W. H., Teukolsky, S. A., Vetterling, W. T., and Flannery, B. P., 1992,
Z ⫽ smoothing vector Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN: The Art of Scientific Computing, Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Greek Symbols 关19兴 Beck, J. V., Blackwell, B., and St. Clair, Jr., 1995, Inverse Heat Conduction:
Ill-Posed Problems, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
␣ ⫽ Tikhonov regularization parameter, Eq. 共13兲; param- 关20兴 Beck, J. V., Alifanov, O. M., Woodbury, K. A., Artyukhin, E. A., and McCor-
eter in CGR algorithm, Eq. 共21兲 mick, N., 1992, ‘‘Joint American-Russian NSF Workshop on Inverse Prob-
␧ ⫽ surface emissivity lems in Heat Transfer,’’ Final Report MSU-ENGR-92-008, Michigan State
University.
⌿ ⫽ norm of side constraint, Eq. 共12兲关21兴 Alifanov, O. M., 1994, Inverse Heat Transfer Problems, Springer-Verlag, Ber-
⌽ ⫽ Tikhonov regularization function lin.
␴ ⫽ Stefan-Boltzmann constant, 5.67⫻10⫺8 W/m2-K4 关22兴 Alifanov, O. M., Artyukhin, E. A., and Rumyantsev, S. V., 1995, Extreme
␶ ⫽ optical thickness, ah Methods for Solving Ill-Posed Problems With Applications to Inverse Heat
Transfer Problems, Begell House, New York.
␰ ⫽ arbitrary coordinate, m 关23兴 Trujillo, D. M., and Busby, H. R., 1997, Practical Inverse Analysis in Engi-
neering, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Subscripts 关24兴 Hansen, P. C., 1998, Rank-Deficient and Discrete Ill-Posed Problems: Nu-
C ⫽ correction term merical Aspects of Linear Inversion, SIAM, Philadelphia, PA.
关25兴 Hansen, P. C., 1992, ‘‘Numerical Tools for Analysis and Solution of Fredholm
i ⫽ index of surface subdivisions or singular values; ith Integral Equations of the First Kind,’’ Inverse Probl., 8, pp. 849–872.
derivative 关26兴 Tikhonov, A. N., 1963, ‘‘Solution of Incorrectly Formulated Problems and the
N ⫽ rank of coefficient matrix Regularization Method,’’ Sov. Math. Dokl., 4, pp. 1035–1038 共English trans-
n ⫽ iteration number lation 1963, Dokl. Akad. Nauk. SSSR, 151, pp. 501–504兲.
关27兴 Tikhonov, A. N., Goncharsky, A. V., Stepanov, V. V., and Yagola, A. C.,
p ⫽ based on p retained singular values 1995, Numerical Methods for the Solution of Ill-Posed Problems, Kulwer Aca-
rad ⫽ radiative demic, Boston.
关28兴 Hanke, M., 1995, Conjugate Gradient Type Methods for Ill-Posed Problems,
0 ⫽ initial estimate John Wiley and Sons, New York.
1,2,3,4 on surfaces 1,2,3 or 4 关29兴 Hansen, P. C., Sekii, T., and Shibahashi, H., 1992, ‘‘The Modified Truncated
SVD Method for Regularization in General Form,’’ SIAM J. Sci. Stat. Com- 关34兴 Morales, J. C., Matsumura, M., Oguma, M., and Howell, J. R., 1997, ‘‘Com-
put., 13, No. 5, pp. 1142–1150. putation of Inverse Radiative Heat Transfer Within Enclosures,’’ Proc. 1997
关30兴 França, F., and Goldstein, L., 1996, ‘‘Application of the Zoning Method in ASME National Heat Transfer Conference, ASME, New York.
Radiative Inverse Problems,’’ Brazilian Congress of Engineering and Thermal 关35兴 Morales, J. C., 1998, ‘‘Radiative Transfer Within Enclosures of Diffuse Gray
Sciences, ENCIT 96, Florianopolis, Brazil. Surfaces: The Inverse Problem,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Mechani-
关31兴 Kudo, K., Kuroda, A., Eid, A., Saito, T., and Oguma, M., 1996, ‘‘Solution of cal Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
the Inverse Radiative Load Problems by the Singular Value Decomposition,’’ 关36兴 Li, H. Y., 1997, ‘‘Inverse Radiation Problem in Two-Dimensional Rectangular
Radiative Transfer–I: Proc. First Int. Symp. on Radiation Transfer, M. P. Media,’’ AIAA J. Thermophy. Heat Transf., 11, No. 4, pp. 556–561.
Menguç, ed., Begell House, New York, pp. 568–578. 关37兴 Matsumura, M., 1997, ‘‘Optimal Design of Industrial Furnaces by Using Nu-
关32兴 Matsumura, M., Morales, J. C., and Howell, J. R., 1998, ‘‘Optimal Design of merical Solution of the Inverse Radiation Problem,’’ M.S. thesis, Department
Industrial Furnaces by Using Numerical Solution of the Inverse Radiation of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
Problem,’’ Proc. 1998 Int. Gas Research Conf., San Diego, Nov. 关38兴 Yang, W.-J., Taniguchi, H., and Kudo, K., 1995, ‘‘Radiative Heat Transfer by
关33兴 Morales, J. C., Harutunian, V., Oguma, M., and Howell, J. R., 1996, ‘‘Inverse the Monte Carlo Method,’’ Advances in Heat Transfer, 27, J. P. Hartnett, and
Design of Radiating Enclosures With an Isothermal Participating Medium,’’ T. F. Irvine, eds., Academic Press, San Diego.
Radiative Transfer I:–Proc. First Int. Symp. on Radiative Heat Transfer, M. P. 关39兴 Jones, M. R., 1999, ‘‘Inverse Analysis of Radiative Heat Transfer Problems,’’
Menguç, ed., Begell House, New York, pp. 579–593. ASME J. Heat Transfer, 121, pp. 481–484.
Comparison of Monte Carlo
Surface Exchange With Radiative
Continuum Results in Large
E. Nisipeanu
Particle Dispersions
P. D. Jones
A Monte Carlo technique follows radiation intensity rays through a dispersion of par-
Mechanical Engineering Department, ticles. Rays reflect from and are absorbed by the surfaces of the particles that they
Auburn University, encounter. Transmitted radiative fluxes are compared with Monte Carlo simulations of a
Auburn University, AL 36849-5341 radiative continuum, using properties from both independent and correlated scattering
theories. Whereas both discontinuous (surface) and continuous representations of the
medium yield similar results for high porosities (low volume fractions), the continuous
representation yields transmission overpredictions for porosities less than 0.9, using in-
dependent scattering properties, and for porosities less than 0.7, using correlated scat-
tering properties. The overprediction is less severe for less reflective particle surfaces.
关S0022-1481共00兲01603-0兴
Keywords: Heat Transfer, Monte Carlo, Participating Media, Particulate, Radiation
Introduction participating media have been studied. By allowing random fluc-

tuations in locations, ray effects from particle arrangement lattices
Transmission of thermal radiation through clouds of optically are avoided.
large particles is often solved by assuming a radiative continuum. Tien 关4兴 gives an extensive overview of radiative transfer in
The radiative transfer equation 共RTE兲 is solved using appropriate packed and fluidized beds, comparing experimental results to both
overall properties for extinction coefficient, scattering albedo, and continuous models 共modified by application of dependent scatter-
scattering phase function. In this work, the real discontinuous na- ing theory兲 and discontinuous cell models. The Monte Carlo mod-
ture of such media is preserved and the multitude of particles are els of Kudo et al. 关3兴 and Yang et al. 关5兴 are found to compare
considered to experience surface radiative exchange between each best with the packed bed experimental results of Chen and
one of them. The approach is simple in concept though somewhat Churchill 关6兴, although neither applies over the entire range of
exacting in practice: A Monte Carlo simulation of a large number particle diameter to bed thickness ratio. 共Experimental results for
of energy bundles passes through the entire medium, interacting high solid fraction dispersions which are not packed are not avail-
with solid particles along the way. The results of this work should able.兲 Yang et al. 关5兴 examines a random packing of spheres in the
be useful in determining where the radiative continuum assump- entire medium instead of using a cell model. The average penetra-
tion breaks down for media such as fluidized beds, dispersed sus- tion distance of a photon before its absorption or scattering is
pensions, porous solids, and other discrete 共or discontinuous兲 me- evaluated as a function of extinction coefficient. The extinction
dia, although the medium characterization will not support the coefficient is determined, using a Monte Carlo technique, as the
fraction of energy bundles intercepted by spheres during travel
packed bed limit, and hence only qualitative conclusions may be
through a predetermined distance. Singh and Kaviany 关7兴 examine
drawn for that case. Potentially, this work could serve as a bench-
a 共nonpacked兲 suspension of spheres in a regular, staggered ar-
mark to improve dependent scattering theory, thus expanding the rangement. A full Monte Carlo approach is employed, and ran-
applicable range for radiative continuum modeling. domly oriented bundles of energy are allowed to interact with
Previous works with discontinuous 共i.e., discrete or noncon- spheres in their paths. Particle properties are restricted to direc-
tinuum兲 models usually address a dense particulate suspension tional independence, and periodic boundary conditions are applied
and treat it as a regular assembly of cells of identical geometry. in the lateral directions to simulate a one-dimensional bed. In
Vortmeyer 关1兴 reviews a series of such radiative models, conclud- order to speed up the solution convergence, an energy partitioning
ing that identical cell models are only applicable if the optical method is used rather than a random number to decide whether a
thickness of the medium is very large and direct incidence from bundle is absorbed or reflected at an impact point. Palmer et al.
non-neighboring cells can be safely neglected. An example of this 关8兴 apply an approach similar to that of the present work, in that
approach is given by Chan and Tien 关2兴, which analyzes radiative arrays of cylindrical reflector elements are modeled both as a col-
transfer through packed beds by determining the scattering dia- lection of discrete surfaces, and also as an equivalent radiative
gram of a unit cell. Solutions are obtained using Monte Carlo continuum. Significant differences in results are found between
sampling techniques, though the radiative flux incident on each the two cases.
neighboring cell is considered to be diffuse. Similar work is re- The present work might be viewed as an extension of Singh and
ported in Kudo et al. 关3兴, which examines different types of pack- Kaviany 关7兴 to a less restricted case. A three-dimensional suspen-
sion of spherical particles in a pseudo-random arrangement is
ing and variations in volume fraction. In the present work, the unit
modeled by a Monte Carlo ray tracing procedure throughout the
cell of fixed geometry is avoided, and both optically thick and thin
entire medium to evaluate radiative transfer through the suspen-
sion for a large range of radiative and geometrical parameters.
The domain of interest consists of a cube of variable size, where
1998; revision received, February 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Kamin- the bottom face is a hot, isothermal, black surface, and the top
ski. face is a black surface at zero temperature. The side walls are
perfect specular reflectors to account for rays traveling into the distribution works well for nonpacked dispersions, it can only
cube from neighboring regions. Any other boundary conditions qualitatively model a randomly packed bed, and only for cubic
can be employed since no simplification towards one or two- packing geometries.
dimensional simulations is made. The spherical particles may be All the dimensions of the problem are normalized by the side
either specular, diffuse, or partially specular reflectors which ab- length of a nodal cube. Consequently, the dimensionless side
sorb and emit radiation. The directional distribution of radiant length of the medium is given by the number of particles in each
propagation in the medium as a system is tracked, and variation of direction. The dimensionless diameter of the spherical particles d s
the radiative properties of specular particles with the local 共par- 共actual diameter divided by nodal cube side length兲 can be varied
ticle surface兲 polar angle is considered. between 0 and 1 共Fig. 1兲. The former case represents a uniformly
distributed, disperse particulate medium. In the latter case, the
Analysis spheres touch each other and the medium has the lowest possible
porosity for the present implementation of the model 共simple cu-
The following analysis is applied to a gray medium in thermal bic兲, although this gives too structured an array and too much
and radiative equilibrium in order to illustrate the essential pro- porosity to actually be used in packed bed cases. After the release
cesses of radiative propagation by surface reflection within the of each energy bundle at the bottom boundary, or after each im-
complex morphology of the medium. With appropriate attention pact on the side boundaries, the position of the particles in the
to the emissive term and spectral indices of refraction, a nongray medium is changed in order to maintain independence from a
case could be considered. With coupling to an energy equation, particular array of particle locations.
combined mode cases could be considered.
Monte Carlo Method. The Monte Carlo technique starts by
Features of the Discontinuous Model. A uniform three- releasing energy bundles from the bottom boundary and then trac-
dimensional mesh is generated in the medium, and a spherical ing them until they are absorbed by a particle or by a boundary.
particle is associated with each node. The sphere centers Locations of the emission points on the lower boundary and di-
(x c ,y c ,z c ) are located in random positions about the node accord- rections of emission are determined using Monte Carlo direct
ing to simulations. For a diffuse, isotropic bottom boundary, the direc-
x c ⫽x c ⫹ 冉 ⌬x
2 冊
⫺r s 共 2R x ⫺1 兲
tions of emission are 共关9兴兲
␺ ⫽2 ␲ R ␺ ⇒ ␺ 苸关 0,2␲ 兲
冉冊
(2)
y c ⫽y c ⫹
⌬y
2
⫺r s 共 2R y ⫺1 兲 ␪ ⫽sin⫺1 共冑R ␪ 兲 ⇒ ␪ 苸 0, 冋册 ␲
2
.
z c ⫽z c ⫹ 冉 ⌬z
2 冊
⫺r s 共 2R z ⫺1 兲 (1)
The coordinates of the energy bundle after it travels a distance P
are
where R x , R y , R z are random numbers between 0 and 1. Over- x⫽x d ⫹l 1 P
lapping of particles is automatically avoided. Thus the medium is
pseudo random, in that each particle must stay within a defined y⫽y d ⫹l 2 P (3)
cell, although it takes on a random location within that cell. As
compared to a fully random distribution of particles, the pseudo- z⫽z d ⫹l 3 P
random distribution has the advantage of maintaining a uniform
number density, while allowing neighboring particles to be lo- where l 1 ⫽sin ␪ cos ␺, l 2 ⫽sin ␪ sin ␺, and l 3 ⫽cos ␪ are the direc-
cated randomly with respect to each other. This limits unnecessary tion cosines of the ray. To determine the coordinates of the inter-
streaming effects caused by uneven number densities, and reduces section point with a spherical particle, x, y, and z are substituted
the number of particle distribution realizations which must be into the spherical surface equation:
simulated before results converge. However, the pseudo-random 共 x⫺x c 兲 2 ⫹ 共 y⫺y c 兲 2 ⫹ 共 z⫺z c 兲 2 ⫽r 2s . (4)
distribution becomes less random as the ratio of particle diameter
to cell size increases, and the particles become effectively fixed in The discriminant of the second-order equation in P is computed.
space within the cell boundaries. Thus, while the pseudo-random If this discriminant is positive, the equation has real roots and the
solution is the smaller of the two 共关2兴兲, the other impact point
being impossible for opaque particles since the energy bundles do
not penetrate the particles.
The spherical particles may be considered to be either diffuse or
specular reflectors, or a combination of these. If the particles are
specular, then directionally dependent reflectivity and absorptivity
functions are predicted by Fresnel’s equations, which depend
upon the complex index of refraction of the particle material 共关9兴兲.
The incident polar and azimuthal angles at a spherical particle
surface are computed from the direction of the in-coming ray and
the normal at the surface. The direction of a reflected ray is found
from Snell’s law as
ŝr ⫽ŝi ⫹2 兩 ŝi •n̂兩 n̂ (5)
in which the unit sphere surface normal n̂ (n 1 ,n 2 ,n 3 ) is
x⫺x c y⫺y c z⫺z c
n̂⫽ ˆi⫹ ˆj⫹ k̂. (6)
rs rs rs
For diffuse reflectors, random polar and azimuthal reflection
Fig. 1 Two-dimensional view of the particle suspension com- angles are simply generated by the Monte Carlo method in the
putational field local coordinate system. However, in order to keep track of the
bundle trajectory, the direction cosines in the overall medium co-
ordinate system must be determined. The direction of the reflected
ray is
(7)
where l ll1 , l ll2 , and l ll3 are the local direction cosines. t̂1 , t̂2 are
two unit tangent vectors at the point of impact and perpendicular
to each other, where
v̂⫻n̂ n̂⫻t̂1
t̂1 ⫽ , t̂2 ⫽ , (8)
兩 v̂⫻n̂兩兩 n̂⫻t̂1 兩
and v̂ is an arbitrary vector.
At its interaction with a particle, the energy bundle can be
absorbed instead of reflected. Since ␣ s , the absorptivity of a par-
ticle, can be seen as the probability of absorption of a bundle at
the interaction point, a random number R a between 0 and 1 is
generated and if R a ⬍ ␣ s , then the energy bundle is absorbed. At
radiative and particle thermal equilibrium, for any energy bundle
absorbed by a sphere, another one is emitted by the same sphere
from a random position on its surface and in a random direction.
The polar and azimuthal angles corresponding to this random po-
sition are
冕冕
0
2␲
0
␪c
sin ␪ d ␪ d ␺
Fig. 2 Directional distribution of the dimensionless radiative
flux in two cases: energy bundles released from the bottom;
冕冕
R ␪⫽ 2␲ ␲
and from the top boundary, respectively
sin ␪ d ␪ d ␺
0 0
1⫺cos ␪ c Monte Carlo techniques are notorious for CPU time consump-
⫽ ⇒ ␪ c ⫽cos⫺1 共 1⫺2R ␪ 兲 tion. Care is taken to check for collisions only with particles in the
2
octant of a generated or reflected direction, and to consider par-
冕 ␺c
0
d␺
ticles for collision in order of distance from a beam origin. Using
an Ultra2 Model 2200–dual 200MHz UltraSPARC processor,
CPU times of roughly 0.5 min per energy bundle are achieved.
冕
R ␺⫽ 2␲ ⇒ ␺ c ⫽2 ␲ R ␺ (9)
As a means of verification, the present model was operated for
d␺ a limiting case of a medium with a single sphere. Analytic solu-
0
tions for both perfectly emitting and perfectly reflecting spheres
and the random position is are within one percent of model predictions for all porosities.
Based on these studies, a base simulation of 105 energy bundles
x⫽x c ⫹r s sin ␪ c cos ␺ c
was chosen.
y⫽y c ⫹r s sin ␪ c sin ␺ c
z⫽z c ⫹r s cos ␪ c . (10) Results and Discussion
The emission direction is determined from relations similar to Eq. Figures 3 and 4 show the dimensionless flux on the top bound-
共2兲. ary 共analogous to transmission for the case of a black bottom
If Eq. 共4兲, with x, y, and z obtained from Eq. 共3兲, has no real boundary兲, for media comprised of diffusely reflecting particles
solution P, then the energy bundle strikes one of the bounding with ␧⫽0.4 共Fig. 3兲, and of specularly reflecting particles with
surfaces. In order to account for the contribution in radiative n⫽4.46, k⫽31.5 共Fig. 4, representative of a highly reflective
transfer from the regions beyond the computational domain, the metal兲. Porosity is varied by altering the size of the particles. The
side walls are considered to be perfect specular reflectors. This variation of dimensionless flux with the parameter H/d s 共medium
means that each time a ray strikes one of the side walls, it reflects height to particle diameter ratio, which for fixed porosity is di-
according to Snell’s law. The energy bundles that end up back on rectly proportional to optical thickness兲 has the same trend for
the bottom face are absorbed and their history ends at this point. either diffuse or specular particles. Figures 3 and 4 show analo-
The energy bundles that manage to get to the top boundary are gous results computed by a Monte Carlo solution of the RTE,
recorded together with the corresponding incident angles with a which assumes a radiative continuum. The properties of the con-
precision of one degree. Examples of directional flux output are tinuous model are determined by independent scattering theory:
shown in Fig. 2. Note that Fig. 2 shows directional flux in 1-deg
increments for a simulation of 105 total bundles 共approximately ␻⫽␳s
800 CPU hrs.兲. Hence, the average number of bundles represented ␤ ⫽Q ext ␲ r 2s N v
by each point in Fig. 2 is only about 103 . This accounts for the
somewhat uneven appearance of Fig. 2. Flux integrated over all ⌽⫽1; specularly scattering media
directions is, of course, much smoother. The total number of en-
ergy bundles absorbed by the top boundary is used to determine 8
⌽⫽ 共 sin ⌰⫺⌰ cos ⌰ 兲 ; diffusely scattering media.
the dimensionless hemispherical radiative flux at the top 3␲
boundary. (11)
Fig. 3 Comparison of Monte Carlo solutions for discontinuous Fig. 5 Comparison of Monte Carlo solutions for discontinuous
and continuous models „independent scattering theory… at dif- and continuous models for different particle radiative
ferent porosities—the diffuse case properties—the diffuse case
For large spheres (2 ␲ r s /␭Ⰷ1), diffraction causes radiative en- whereas differences appear for lower porosities. That is, while a
ergy to be scattered forward within a very narrow angle 共关9兴兲 from radiative continuum solution 共RTE兲 using independent scattering
the direction of transmission. Thus diffraction can be neglected is a good approximation for high porosity particle suspensions,
and treated as transmission. It is also neglected in the discontinu- such a solution severely overestimates radiative transmission
ous model. Hence, for large particles without diffraction Q ext through lower porosity suspensions. Note that transmittance in
⫽1. For the arrangement in this model, the dimensionless N v Figs. 3 and 4 is shown on a log scale. The continuum approach
⫽1, where N v is the number density defined by the number of the treats the medium as being composed of a multitude of point
spheres in the volume 共unity兲 of the bed. Since thermal radiation scatterers and having a certain extinction coefficient. As the par-
is basically infrared, the assumption of large spheres is satisfied ticles become larger relative to their computational cell 共decreas-
for r s ⬎10 ␮ m. ing porosity兲, they cannot be approximated as point scatterers and
For high porosities 共⬎0.9兲 the continuous and discontinuous the continuum approach breaks down. Note in Figs. 3 and 4 that
models 共RTE and surface radiation兲 produce similar results, the difference between the continuous and discontinuous models
varies only slightly with H/d s 共medium thickness; number of ball
rows兲. Thus, it may be inferred that the coarseness 共ball size rela-
tive to medium thickness兲 of the medium has only a slight effect
on the validity of the continuum assumption.
RTE results were also computed using the dependent scattering
theory of Kamiuto 共关10兴, not shown兲. Dependent scattering im-
proves the RTE results, delaying divergence between the continu-
ous and discontinuous results to ␸ ⬍0.7, though in other respects
following the same trends as Figs. 3 and 4. Porosities of ␸ ⬍0.7
might be considered to come into a range where the pseudo-
random medium starts to exhibit a tendency towards streaming
effects due to the constraint of larger particles within a fixed vol-
ume computational cell. However, it should be noted that stream-
ing effects 共through the pseudo-random medium兲 would tend to
increase transmittance, whereas all results reported here show a
transmittance for the discontinuous simulation which is lower than
that predicted by continuum methods. If discontinuous effects are
unimportant, then correlated scattering theory should work as well
for a simple cubic packed bed ( ␸ ⫽0.476) as for a randomly
packed bed, except for perhaps a bit more transmittance in the
cubic bed, as allowed by streaming effects. And yet it is the con-
tinuum model which gives the overprediction.
The effect on transmittance of differing particle radiative prop-
erties is shown in Figs. 5 and 6 for diffuse and specular reflectors,
respectively, for H/d s ⫽40. For diffuse reflectors, results for sev-
eral values of particle emittance are shown. For specular reflec-
Fig. 4 Comparison of Monte Carlo solutions for discontinuous tors, four cases are considered: high reflectance metallic 共Al兲; low
and continuous models „independent scattering theory… at dif- reflectance metallic 共Ni兲; high reflectance dielectric (n⫽6); and
ferent porosities—the specular case low reflectance dielectric (n⫽1). Figure 5 shows that divergence
conditions 共instead of specularly reflecting boundaries on a wide
mesh兲, and energy partitioning 共instead of probability-based ab-
sorption兲. Transmittance is plotted against optical thickness, ␶
⫽1.5(1 – ␸ )H/d s . The present model predicts consistently higher
transmittances, and gives results for high porosity which are simi-
lar for the discontinuous and the continuous approaches. The
Singh and Kaviany model predicts lower transmittances than the
continuous model even for the highest considered porosity. The
differences shown in Fig. 7 are interesting in that they indicate
potential difficulties in setting up a truly confirming experiment.
Conclusions
Given a sufficient number of energy bundles and assuming the
absence of modeling errors, the Monte Carlo method might be
considered to offer the most correct solution to radiative transfer
problems that can be available 共关11兴兲. The present full Monte
Carlo simulation of surface radiation interaction with a pseudo-
randomly arranged suspension of optically large, spherical,
opaque particles shows that radiative continuum models do not
correctly predict the behavior of such media at low porosity
共dense suspensions兲, or for reflective 共low emittance兲 particles.
This may be due to the fact that as particles attain finite diameters
with respect to the interparticle distance, the medium becomes
Fig. 6 Comparison of Monte Carlo solutions for discontinuous significantly inhomogeneous and might not be properly be de-
and continuous models for different particle radiative scribed by the homogeneous continuum model with properties
properties—the specular case determined by the independent scattering theory. The discrepancy
can be improved by using correlated scattering to develop the
effective continuum properties of the medium, though divergence
between the discontinuous 共surface radiation Monte Carlo兲 and between continuous and discontinuous simulations still occurs. It
continuum assumption 共RTE兲 results increases with decreasing is also found that deviation between the continuous 共RTE兲 and the
particle emittance as well as decreasing porosity. Figure 6 shows discontinuous 共surface radiation兲 models depends only slightly on
that divergence increases for higher reflectance particles and also the coarseness of the medium 共expressed here by H/d s 兲.
for more metallic particles. Figure 6 confirms that for isotropic
scattering in the continuous model, particle surface properties are Nomenclature
not important 共关9兴兲. Since the difference between them is insig-
nificant, identifying marks are omitted from the continuum results ds ⫽
dimensionless particle diameter
lines in Fig. 6. Figure 6 demonstrates that there is a significant H ⫽
dimensionless medium depth
effect of particle surface properties in dispersed media, as pre- î,ĵ,k̂ ⫽
unit vectors in x,y,z directions
dicted by Monte Carlo simulation. k ⫽
absorptive index
Figure 7 compares the present results with those of Singh and l 1 ,l 2 ,l 3 ⫽
direction cosines
Kaviany 关7兴, which considers a fixed 共staggered兲 particle arrange- n ⫽
refractive index
ment 共instead of pseudo random兲, with periodic lateral boundary n̂ ⫽
unit surface normal
n 1 ,n 2 ,n 3 ⫽
normal components in x,y,z directions
Nv ⫽
number density
P ⫽
dimensionless pathlength
Q ext ⫽
extinction efficiency
q 1 ,q 2 ⫽
dimensionless hemispherical radiative flux re-
flected and transmitted, 共flux/␴ T 41 兲
r s ⫽ dimensionless particle radius
R x ,R y ,R z
R ␣ ,R ␪ ,R ␺ ⫽ random numbers between 0 and 1
ŝ1 ,ŝr ⫽ incident and reflected ray direction vector
t̂1 ,t̂2 ⫽ unit vectors tangent to the particle surface
T 1 ,T 2 ⫽ bottom and top boundary temperatures, K
v̂ ⫽ arbitrary vector
x,y,z ⫽ dimensionless energy bundle coordinates
x c ,y c ,z c ⫽ dimensionless sphere center coordinates
⌬x,⌬y,⌬z ⫽ dimensionless side length of unit cell
Greek Symbols
␣ ⫽ absorptivity
␧ ⫽ emissivity
␪ ⫽ polar angle
⌰ ⫽ angle between incident and scattered rays
␳s ⫽ particle reflectivity
␴ ⫽ Stefan-Boltzmann constant, 5.67⫻10⫺8 W/m2 K4
␶ ⫽ optical thickness
␸ ⫽ porosity
Fig. 7 Comparison with Singh and Kaviany model ⌽ ⫽ scattering phase function
␺ ⫽ azimuthal angle 关3兴 Kudo, K., Yang, W. J., Taniguchi, H., and Hayasaka, H., 1987, ‘‘Radiative
␻ ⫽ scattering albedo Heat Transfer in Packed Spheres by Monte Carlo Method,’’ Heat Transfer in
High Technology and Power Engineering, Hemisphere, New York, pp. 529–
Subscripts 540.
关4兴 Tien, C. L., 1988, ‘‘Thermal Radiation in Packed and Fluidized Beds,’’ ASME
c ⫽ particle center J. Heat Transfer, 110, No. 4共B兲, pp. 1230–1242.
d ⫽ departure point 关5兴 Yang, Y. S., Howell, J. R., and Klein, D. E., 1983, ‘‘Radiative Heat Transfer
i,r ⫽ incident, reflected Through a Randomly Packed Bed of Spheres by the Monte Carlo Method,’’
ll ⫽ local ASME J. Heat Transfer, 105, No. 2, pp 325–332.
s ⫽ sphere 共spherical particle兲关6兴 Chen, J. C., and Churchill, S. W., 1963, ‘‘Radiant Heat Transfer in Packed
v ⫽ volume Beds,’’ AIChE. J., 9, pp. 35–41.
x,y,z ⫽ x,y,z directions 关7兴 Singh, B. P., and Kaviany, M., 1991, ‘‘Independent Theory Versus Direct
␪, ␺ ⫽ polar, azimuthal directions Simulation of Radiation Heat Transfer in Packed Beds,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
Transf., 34, No. 11, pp. 2869–2882.
1, 2 ⫽ bottom, top boundaries
关8兴 Palmer, B. J., Drost, M. K., and Welty, J. R., 1996, ‘‘Comparison of Equation
1, 2, 3 ⫽ perpendicular directions in local coordinate system of Transfer With Simulations on Large Arrays of Cylindrical Reflector Ele-
ments,’’ Numer. Heat Transfer, Part B, 30, No. 3, pp. 271–289.
References 关9兴 Modest, M. F., 1993, Radiative Heat Transfer, McGraw-Hill, New York.
关10兴 Kamiuto, K., 1990, ‘‘Correlated Radiative Transfer in Packed-Sphere Sys-
关1兴 Vortmeyer, D., 1978, ‘‘Radiation in Packed Solids,’’ Proceedings, 6th Inter-
national Heat Transfer Conference 共Toronto兲, Vol. 6, Hemisphere, Washing- tems,’’ J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transf., 43, No. 1, pp. 39–43.
ton, DC, pp. 525–539. 关11兴 Howell, J. R., 1988, ‘‘Thermal Radiation in Participating Media: The Past, the
关2兴 Chan, C. K., and Tien, C. L., 1974, ‘‘Radiative Transfer in Packed Spheres,’’ Present, and Some Possible Futures,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 110, No. 4共B兲,
ASME J. Heat Transfer, 96, pp. 52–58. pp. 1220–1229.
Pool Boiling Heat Transfer From
Plain and Microporous, Square
Pin-Finned Surfaces in Saturated
K. N. Rainey
Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering,
FC-72
The University of Texas at Arlington,
Arlington, TX 76019-0023 The present research is an experimental study of ‘‘double enhancement’’ behavior in pool
boiling from heater surfaces simulating microelectronic devices immersed in saturated
S. M. You FC-72 at atmospheric pressure. The term ‘‘double enhancement’’ refers to the combina-
Associate Professor,
tion of two different enhancement techniques: a large-scale area enhancement (square
School of Mechanical
pin fin array) and a small-scale surface enhancement (microporous coating). Fin lengths
and Aerospace Engineering,
were varied from 0 (flat surface) to 8 mm. Effects of this double enhancement technique
Seoul National University,
on critical heat flux (CHF) and nucleate boiling heat transfer in the horizontal orientation
Seoul 151-742, Korea
(fins are vertical) are investigated. Results showed significant increases in nucleate boil-
e-mail: smyou@snu.ac.kr
ing heat transfer coefficients with the application of the microporous coating to the heater
surfaces. CHF was found to be relatively insensitive to surface microstructure for the
finned surfaces except in the case of the surface with 8-mm-long fins. The nucleate boiling
and CHF behavior has been found to be the result of multiple, counteracting mechanisms:
surface area enhancement, fin efficiency, surface microstructure (active nucleation site
density), vapor bubble departure resistance, and re-wetting liquid flow resistance.
关S0022-1481共00兲02603-7兴
Keywords: Boiling, Enhancement, Experimental, Finned Surfaces, Heat Transfer
Introduction FC-72 and FC-87 and found that their single fin modeling ap-
proach could be extended to predict the boiling curves of their
For the past three decades, microprocessor technology has pro-
multiple fin surfaces with reasonable accuracy. Kumagai et al. 关7兴
duced increasingly denser and faster chips. These advances in
produced an extensive study of boiling from relatively small cop-
chip design have also produced increased power dissipation re-
per rectangular fin arrays. They tested various fin lengths 共0 to 10
quirements. To handle the increased heat dissipation requirements
mm兲, thicknesses 共0.2 to 1.5 mm兲, and spacings 共0.28 to 2 mm兲 as
of these chips, direct liquid immersion cooling, involving boiling
well as base surface orientation in R-113 and determined an ‘‘op-
heat transfer between the chips and the coolant, is considered a
timized’’ fin array design. Later, Yeh 关8兴 proposed a design
practical method for handling the large amount of heat generated
method to obtain an optimum array of longitudinal rectangular
from high watt density devices 共Bar-Cohen 关1兴兲. Compared with
fins. Kumagai et al. 关7兴 also found that the longitudinal fin orien-
forced convection cooling schemes 共both single and two-phase兲,
tation 共base surface is vertical兲 provided better, more stable heat
pool boiling heat transfer is considered to be the more attractive
transfer performance than the vertical fin orientation 共base surface
alternative because it is generally less complex and easier to seal.
horizontal兲. On the other hand, Guglielmini et al. 关9兴 found that
However, pool boiling must rely on enhancement techniques to
the vertical fin orientation of their copper square pin fin array
achieve the high heat flux requirements predicted for future
surfaces 共0.4 and 0.8 mm width and spacing, 3 mm long兲 provided
electronics.
slightly better heat transfer performance than the longitudinal
Large-scale area enhancement using a single or an array of fins
orientation.
is one such method that has been studied for the enhancement of
Another method which has been studied extensively for the
pool boiling heat transfer. Haley and Westwater 关2兴 studied a
enhancement of pool boiling heat transfer is small-scale surface
6.4-mm diameter, 30.6-mm long single horizontal copper fin in
enhancement using a variety of techniques: surface roughening,
isopropyl alcohol and R-113 and found that multiple stable boil-
mechanically produced reentrant type surfaces, porous metallic
ing modes could occur simultaneously and at adjacent positions
coatings, and microporous coatings as well as others. Two meth-
along a fin, thus showing the highly complex nature of boiling
ods of particular interest are surface roughening and microporous
from fins. As a result, Lai and Hsu 关3兴, and more recently Liaw
coatings. Due to severe aging effects, surface roughening has re-
and Yeh 关4兴, have presented theoretical models of multiple-mode
boiling from single fins in order to study this phenomenon. ceived little sustained interest. Chaudri and McDougall 关10兴 mea-
Klein and Westwater 关5兴 provided the first experimental study sured the long-term nucleate boiling performance of an abrasive
of boiling from a multiple pin fin array. Using 6.4-mm diameter, treated tube and found only temporary benefits. Nishikawa et al.
19 and 28.6-mm long copper cylindrical pin fins positioned hori- 关11兴 also observed that the effects of surface roughness diminish
zontally in R-113 and water, they found that a fin spacing of only with increasing pressure. A relatively new method for surface
about 1.6 mm was wide enough to allow all fins to behave inde- enhancement is the microporous coating developed by O’Connor
pendently, even for nine or ten fin arrays. Mudawar and Anderson and You 关12兴 and Chang and You 关13,14兴. The coating is a sur-
关6兴 also studied single and multiple copper pin finned surfaces in face treatment technique used to increase vapor/gas entrapment
volume and active nucleation site density by forming a porous
structure with cavities much smaller than conventional metallic
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, June 18, porous coatings. Chang and You 关15兴 have shown that, compared
1999; revision received, Apr. 17, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: T. Chu. to a plain surface, the microporous coated surface augmented
nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients by about 330 percent croporous coating technique was previously developed by
and increased critical heat flux 共CHF兲 by approximately 100 O’Connor and You 关12兴, further refined by Chang and You
percent. 关13,14兴, and patented by You and O’Connor 关16兴. The coating is a
The objective of the present work is to investigate the pool surface treatment technique used to increase vapor/gas entrapment
boiling heat transfer performance of a double enhancement tech- volume and active nucleation site density by forming a porous
nique which utilizes a multiple square pin fin array on a horizontal structure of about 0.1–1 ␮m size cavities. The ABM coating was
flat surface with a microporous coating surface enhancement. By named from the initial letters of its three components: Aluminum
combining a small-scale surface enhancement with a large-scale particles/Devcon Brushable Ceramic epoxy/Methyl-Ethyl-
area enhancement, the overall heat transfer performance could Keytone 共M.E.K.兲. The mixture of the three components was
potentially be increased beyond the heat transfer performance ob- spray-coated over the finned surfaces using an Iwata HP-C air-
tained using only one method. To the authors’ knowledge, no brush. After the carrier 共M.E.K.兲 evaporated, the resulting coated
research has been done on the combination of micron-scale sur- layer consisted of microporous structures with aluminum particles
face enhancements with fin arrays. The heater surfaces are ma- 共1 to 20 ␮m in diameter兲 and a binder 共Devcon Brushable Ce-
chined from solid copper blocks. An initial matrix of five different ramic兲, having a thickness of ⬇50 ␮m. The microporous coating
fin lengths were considered: 0 共flat surface兲, 1, 2, 4, and 8 mm.
Additional fin lengths of 0.25 and 0.5 mm for the microporous
coated surface were added to better understand the effect of fin
length on CHF. All testing is performed in saturated FC-72 at
atmospheric pressure, under increasing heat flux conditions, and
with the base surface in the horizontal upward-facing orientation
共fins are vertical兲.
Experimental Apparatus and Procedure

Test Facility. The pool boiling test facility used for the
present work is shown in Fig. 1. The test liquid, saturated FC-72
at atmospheric pressure, was contained within a stainless steel
pressure vessel, 406 mm high and 154 mm in diameter, which was
heated by three band heaters located on the sides and bottom of
the chamber. A cartridge heater was located in the bottom of the
chamber to provide additional heating during degassing and prior
to tests. The test vessel was insulated with 15-mm-thick foam
insulation. An external water-cooled condenser was used through-
out the testing to prevent loss of test liquid. A copper-constantan
thermocouple was placed within the test vessel to measure bulk
liquid temperature. Atmospheric pressure was maintained by vent-
ing the vessel to ambient. The test heater assembly was mounted
to a stainless steel support bar and immersed in the test liquid. The
test liquid surface was maintained at approximately 150 mm
above the test heater.
A DC power supply was connected in series with a shunt resis-
tor and the test heater. The shunt resistor, rated at 100 mV and 10
A, was used to determine the current in the electric circuit. A
measured voltage drop across the test heater was used to calculate
the heat flux applied to the test heater.
The test heater design is shown in Fig. 2. The heating element
is a thin tantalum film and a titanium nitride film. The heating
element was sputtered onto a 0.5-mm-thick silicon nitride coated
silicon wafer along with copper for solder connections. The total
heating element electrical resistance was about 20 ⍀. The heating
element side of the wafer was soldered to copper tape for the Fig. 1 Schematic of test apparatus
power lead connections while the other side of the wafer was
soldered to the finned copper block. The finned copper blocks
were machined from solid pieces of copper with a 10 mm⫻10
mm⫻2 mm base surface and 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 mm fin
lengths, L. A 5⫻5 array of square pin fins with a fin thickness, t,
of 1 mm and fin spacing, b, of 1 mm was machined on the surface
using a high-speed steel slitting saw blade. The base of the copper
block contains two thermocouple wells centered in the base sur-
face and spaced 5 mm apart and 5 mm deep. The copper/heater
assembly was attached to a Teflon substrate 共10 mm thick兲 using
a 3M epoxy 共1832L-B/A, k⬇0.067 W/m-K兲. The completed test
heater was then mounted in a Lexan frame and surrounded by 3M
epoxy to generate a flush-mounted heating surface. The surface
condition of the finned heaters is ‘‘machine roughened.’’ The flat
surface was also created using the same machining process in
order to obtain a comparable surface roughness. All surfaces were
cleaned with acetone prior to testing.
For the microporous coated heater tests, the coating used is the
ABM coating introduced by Chang and You 关14兴. The mi- Fig. 2 Test heater design
provides no significant increase of the heat transfer surface area. transfer coefficients showing negligible surface microstructure ef-
Detailed descriptions of the coating are provided by O’Connor fects. The incipient superheat values showed a decreasing trend
and You 关12兴 and Chang and You 关13,14兴. with increased ‘‘surface roughness.’’ The incipient superheat val-
ues for the present plain machine roughened surface varied within
Test Procedure. The test chamber was heated to the test liq- a range of 16 to 28 K for three consecutive runs while Chang and
uid’s saturation temperature using the three band heaters and the You 关15兴 reported a range of 25 to 40 K for their highly polished
cartridge heater. Once at its saturation temperature, the test liquid surface and Chang and You 关14兴 reported incipient superheats to
was boiled vigorously for two hours in order to remove dissolved be less than 10 K for their ABM surface. O’Connor and You 关12兴
gases before testing. Boiling curves were then generated for each attributed the decrease in incipient superheat for their microporous
surface tested. There was a two-hour delay between runs to allow coating compared to plain surfaces primarily to the presence of
the heater and test section to return to steady state. Three consecu- larger embryonic bubble diameters produced by increased vapor/
tive runs were conducted for each heater tested. Identical boiling gas entrapment in the microstructure. The rougher surface of the
curves for each surface assured the consistency and repeatability present machine roughened surface is expected to have larger
of the data. cavities 共larger embryonic bubble sizes兲 than the highly polished
Heat flux was controlled by voltage input. After each voltage surface and thus exhibit decreased incipient superheats. The
change 共heat-flux increment兲, a 15-second delay was imposed be- nucleate boiling curves of the three surfaces show significant in-
fore initiating data acquisition. After the delay, the computer re- creases in heat transfer coefficient relative to increasing surface
peatedly collected and averaged 125 base surface temperature roughness. For instance, at 10 W/cm2, the machine roughened and
measurements over 15 seconds until the temperature difference microporous coated surfaces exhibited heat transfer coefficients
between two consecutive averaged temperature measurements for that were 80 percent and 300 percent higher than the highly pol-
all thermocouples was less than 0.2 K. The test section at this ished surface, respectively. Chang and You 关14兴 attributed the
point was assumed to be at steady state. Steady-state condition better heat transfer performance of the microporous coated surface
was usually reached approximately 45 seconds after each heat- to increased external vaporization, smaller departing bubble sizes,
flux increment. After reaching steady state, the heater surface and and higher bubble departure frequencies produced from the mi-
bulk fluid temperatures were measured and the heat flux was cal- croporous structure.
culated. For heat flux values greater than ⬇80 percent of q CHF ⬙ , As shown in Fig. 3, the surface microstructure significantly
instantaneous surface temperature was monitored for 45 seconds ⬙ as well as incipience and nucleate boiling perfor-
affects q CHF
after each increment to prevent heater burnout. Each instanta-
⬙ values for the present machine roughened sur-
mance. The q CHF
neous surface temperature measurement was compared with the
previous steady-state surface temperature measurement. If a tem- face ranged from 18.7 to 19.1 W/cm2 while Chang and You 关15兴
reported a range of 13.2 to 16.0 W/cm2 for their highly polished
perature difference larger than 20 K was detected, q CHF ⬙ was as- surface and Chang and You 关14兴 show a range of about 25.3 to
sumed and the power shut off. The q CHF ⬙ value was computed as 26.5 W/cm2 for their microporous coated surface. In comparison,
the steady-state heat flux value just prior to power supply shut- Zuber’s 关17兴 correlation given by
down plus half of the increment.
␲
Experimental Uncertainty. Uncertainties for the heat-flux ⬙
q CHF,Z ⫽ h ␳ 1/2关 g ␴ 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲兴 1/4 (1)
24 l v v
and temperature measurements were estimated for the present
heater. Substrate conduction losses were estimated based on the ⬙
predicts q CHF,Z ⫽15.1 W/cm2 for saturated FC-72 at atmospheric
values reported by O’Connor and You 关12兴, whose heater had a pressure. Since Zuber’s 关17兴 correlation does not take into account
similar construction as the present one. Taking into account both the effects of surface microstructure, it fails to accurately predict
measurement and substrate conduction errors, the uncertainty in ⬙ for enhanced surfaces. Chang and You 关13兴 classified par-
q CHF
heat flux (q b⬙ ) was estimated as 16, 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2 percent at 0.5, ticle enhancement coatings into two groups: microporous and po-
16, 80, and 120 W/cm2, respectively. In addition, temperature rous. If the coating thickness was less than the superheated liquid
measurement uncertainty was estimated considering thermocouple
calibration error, temperature correction for the embedded ther-
mocouples, and thermocouple resolution error. The uncertainty
for temperature measurement was ⫾0.4 K.
Results and Discussion

The effects of combining an area enhancement 共square pin fins兲
and a surface enhancement 共microporous coating兲 were investi-
gated utilizing 1 cm2 共10 mm⫻10 mm兲 copper base surfaces with
different fin lengths: 0 共flat surface兲, 1, 2, 4, and 8 mm. Both plain
and microporous coated finned surfaces were tested in saturated
FC-72 at 1 atm. All testing was performed under increasing heat
flux conditions and in the horizontal, upward facing orientation.
Additional fin lengths of 0.25 and 0.5 mm for the microporous
coated surface were tested to better understand the behavior of
⬙ at fin lengths between 0 and 1 mm.
q CHF
Effect of Surface Microstructure for Flat Surfaces. The
effect of surface microstructure on pool nucleate boiling heat
⬙ was investigated by comparing the present plain
transfer and q CHF
machine roughened flat surface with a highly polished plain sur-
face previously tested by Chang and You 关15兴 and a microporous
共ABM兲 coated surface previously tested by Chang and You 关14兴.
Figure 3 illustrates the flat surface pool boiling test results with
the three different surface conditions. The single-phase natural
convection data of all of the surfaces exhibited comparable heat Fig. 3 Surface microstructure effect for flat surfaces
layer thickness, it was termed ‘‘microporous’’ while coatings with
thicknesses greater than the superheated liquid layer thickness
were called ‘‘porous.’’ Using Zuber’s 关17兴 hydrodynamic model
⬙ , Polezhaev and Kovalev 关18兴 tried to explain the en-
of q CHF
⬙ of porous coatings as due to the structure of
hancement on q CHF
the coating influencing the vapor jet spacing rather than the Taylor
wavelength. Tehvor 关19兴 used Haramura and Katto’s 关20兴 macro-
⬙ to explain the enhancement on q CHF
layer dryout model of q CHF ⬙ of
porous coatings as due to an increase in the macrolayer evapora-
tion time caused by the presence of the porous layer. Although
these hypotheses could explain the microporous coated surface
results, neither of them explains the enhancement of q CHF ⬙ ob-
served in Fig. 3 for the machine roughened surface. This indicates
that the enhancement of q CHF⬙ for plain, roughened surfaces is
primarily due to the increased number of active nucleation sites
provided by the microstructure.
Method for Analyzing Experimental Finned Surface

Data. Prior to discussing the results of the finned surfaces, a
method for determining the surface averaged heat transfer coeffi-
cient, h̄, and the heat sink efficiency 共also called the overall sur-
face efficiency兲, ␩ o , from the experimental data must be estab-
lished. For a finned surface, the heat sink efficiency is given by
Fig. 4 Plain, finned surface boiling curves based on total sur-
Af q t⬙ face area
␩ o ⫽1⫺ 共 1⫺ ␩ f 兲 ⫽ (2)
At h̄⌬T b
where the individual fin efficiency is ␩ f ⫽tanh(mLc)/mLc . For a
square pin fin L c ⫽L⫹t/4 and m⫽(4h̄/kt) 1/2; Eq. 共2兲 can be nu- additional heat transfer degradation mechanism not seen in the
L⫽1, 2, and 4 mm surface data. This behavior was seen to be
merically solved for h̄ since all other variables are known. Once h̄ repeatable, even for different surfaces. Kumagai et al. 关7兴 ob-
is known, ␩ o can be calculated. This method is used to calculate h̄ served that boiling did not occur at the fin tips of their longest
and ␩ o in the following analysis of the present finned surface rectangular finned surface in R-113 even near q CHF⬙ . Although the
experimental data. Although this one-dimensional approach for heat transfer mode at the fin tips in the present study could not be
the finned surface data reduction is not considered very accurate, determined, it is believed that the degradation in heat transfer
it is believed to provide a good means for the comparison of the performance is due to a non-boiling region near the fin tips 共sur-
boiling behavior between the plain and microporous finned face temperature too low to sustain boiling兲. This degradation
surfaces. mechanism decreases the active or ‘‘effective’’ nucleate boiling
Plain, Finned Surface Nucleate Boiling Results. The boil- heat transfer surface area and, therefore, shifts the boiling curve of
ing curves of the plain finned surfaces with different fin lengths the L⫽8 mm surface downward when plotted based upon total
are shown in Fig. 4. Unless otherwise noted, ‘‘plain’’ refers to the area, as seen in Fig. 4. By assuming that the effective surface area
uncoated, machine-roughened surface discussed previously. In of the L⫽8 mm surface is approximately equivalent to the total
this graph, the heat flux based on the total finned surface area 共fin surface area of an L⬇5 mm surface 共shown as a dashed line in
and base surface area兲 is plotted versus the base surface superheat. Fig. 4兲, the boiling curve of the L⫽8 mm surface became nearly
Since boiling fins can have non-uniform heat transfer coefficients coincident with the L⫽1, 2, and 4 mm surfaces. This indicates
共Srinivasan and Shah 关21兴兲 and thus temperature variations, the that only about 60 percent of the L⫽8 mm surface is effectively
surface superheat based on the temperature at the base of the fins transferring heat and that L⬇5 mm is the optimum fin length for
(⌬T b ⫽T b ⫺T sat) is used. T b is taken to be the temperature at the the present plain, finned surfaces.
top of the base surface 共1 mm above the thermocouple location兲. The fin tip wall superheat value of the L⫽8 mm surface at the
A one-dimensional correction was applied to the thermocouple last steady-state point prior to CHF was estimated at 12 K using a
measurements in order to obtain T b . The flat surface data serves standard one-dimensional steady-state conduction analysis and as-
as a reference for comparison. The single-phase natural convec- suming that the heat transfer coefficient along the fin is constant
tion data for all surfaces show only a small degree of scatter that 共the average value shown in Fig. 5兲. Although the estimate is not
is the result of uncertainties in surface area and temperature mea- considered very accurate, it shows that the fin tip temperature is
surement. For all of the finned surfaces, boiling generally initiated very near the minimum temperature required for nucleation,
in a ‘‘patchy,’’ localized fashion and spread to the rest of the which supports the previous conjecture of a non-boiling fin tip
surface as the heat flux was increased. For a given surface, the condition.
boiling initiated in the same locations for all runs indicating the Below q t⬙ ⬇7 W/cm2 共L⫽1, 2, and 4 mm cases兲, the finned
presence of ‘‘preferred’’ nucleation sites produced by the machin- surfaces in Fig. 4 show boiling curve slopes approximately equal
ing process. These preferred sites were generally at the fin edges to the flat surface boiling curve indicating comparable nucleate
and explain the virtual absence of temperature overshoots. boiling behavior. However, at heat fluxes above q t⬙ ⬇7 W/cm2 ,
The nucleate boiling performance of the plain surfaces shows the boiling curves show a noticeable decrease in slope. Similar
some interesting trends. From Fig. 4, it can be seen that the boil- trends were seen in the boiling curves of Kumagai et al. 关7兴 and
ing curves are showing different behaviors relative to fin length. Guglielmini et al. 关9兴. Haley and Westwater 关2兴 have shown that
The L⫽1, 2, and 4 mm surfaces are nearly coincident and show stable film, transition, and nucleate boiling along with free con-
comparable heat transfer performance up to q CHF ⬙ while the L vection can occur simultaneously and at adjacent positions along a
⫽8 mm surface shows a significant degradation in heat transfer single, horizontal fin in isopropyl alcohol and R-113. However,
performance. The significant degradation of the L⫽8 mm surface visual observations as well as the relatively low wall superheats
relative to the other finned surfaces indicates the presence of an above q t⬙ ⬇7 W/cm2 indicate that initiation of localized film boil-
crease in the average heat transfer coefficient over the flat surface
data. This is most likely due to a larger number of active nucle-
ation sites than the flat surface created by the machining of the
fins. Between q t⬙ ⬇5 – 10 W/cm2 , the finned surfaces reach a
maximum h̄ value and then decrease with increasing heat flux
while ␩ o reaches a minimum value and then increases slightly
with increasing heat flux. This behavior corresponds to the degra-
dation in heat transfer from the increased re-wetting fluid resis-
tance discussed previously. The more rapid decline in h̄ with in-
creasing q t⬙ of the L⫽8 mm surface shows the further degradation
in heat transfer performance caused by a reduction in effective
boiling area from poor heat sink efficiency 共less than 60 percent as
shown in Fig. 6兲 which has also previously been discussed.
The heat flux based on the base 共or projected兲 surface area,
which is considered most useful for microelectronics cooling ap-
plications, is plotted in Fig. 7. Figure 7 shows that for surfaces
with fin lengths from 1 to 4 mm the heat transfer performance
improve proportional to surface area. However, any further in-
crease in fin length does not significantly improve the heat transfer
performance due to a reduction in the effective area for nucleate
boiling as shown by the L⫽8 mm surface.
Fig. 5 Plain, finned surface average heat transfer coefficients
Microporous, Finned Surface Nucleate Boiling Results.
The boiling curves of the microporous coated finned surfaces with
ing at the base of the fins is not the cause of the observed slope different fin lengths are shown in Fig. 8. The heat flux based on
changes. Instead, it is believed that the degradation is primarily the base surface area is plotted along with the plain, flat surface
the result of increased bubble departure resistance due to the pres- data from Fig. 7 for reference. For clarity, only the nucleate boil-
ence of the fins. The heat sink geometry increases the vapor ing portion of the finned surfaces’ boiling curves is shown. The
bubble residence time by providing resistance to the departing nucleate boiling performance of the microporous coated surfaces
bubbles. The longer bubble residence time increases the flow re- 共flat to L⫽8 mm兲 show significantly lower surface superheats
sistance on the approaching re-wetting liquid causing liquid star- than the plain surfaces. This shows the superior nucleate boiling
vation and ultimately producing a temporal localized dry-out situ- characteristics of the microporous coated surfaces over the plain
ation near the base of the fins. This would cause a decrease in the surfaces, which has already been discussed in detail by Chang and
heat transfer coefficient and increase in the base surface tempera- You 关13–15兴. However, the most striking feature of the mi-
ture, as seen in Fig. 4. Also, the flow path blockage provided by croporous coated surface results is that the nucleate boiling curves
the fins further increases the re-wetting liquid flow resistance, of all fin lengths, including the flat surface, appear to collapse to
however, this effect is believed to be small compared to the effect one curve when plotted relative to the base surface. This shows
of the longer bubble residence time. that the nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient 共based upon a
given base area兲 can be increased with the application of the mi-
The average heat transfer coefficient, h̄, and the heat sink effi- croporous coating, however, no further improvement is gained by
ciency, ␩ o , of the plain finned surfaces were calculated based increasing the fin length. Chang and You 关22兴 have observed that
upon previous discussions and plotted versus the total surface area the heat transfer performance of microporous coated surfaces un-
heat flux in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively 共the flat surface is assumed
to have a heat sink efficiency equal to 1兲. At heat fluxes below
q t⬙ ⬇5 W/cm2 , the finned surfaces in Fig. 5 show a sizable in-
Fig. 7 Plain, finned surface boiling curves based on base sur-

Fig. 6 Plain, finned surface heat sink efficiency face area
Fig. 9 PlainÕmicroporous coated, finned surface average heat
transfer coefficients
Fig. 8 Microporous coated, finned surface boiling curves
based on base surface area
Rainey’s curve fit compares well with the present curve fit given
by Eq. 共3兲. Historically, the exponent on ⌬T b has been taken to be
about 3 for nucleate boiling 共Rohsenow 关23兴兲 and 0.75 for laminar
der saturated nucleate boiling conditions is unaffected by changes film boiling 共Bromley 关25兴 and Berenson 关26兴兲. The exponent of
in either surface area or inclination, therefore, it is interesting to 2.4 on ⌬T b when q b⬙ ⬍50 W/cm2 indicates that the primary heat
see that the nucleate boiling heat transfer performance of the transfer mode is nucleate boiling while the exponent of 0.62 on
present microporous coated finned surfaces is unaffected by
⌬T b when q b⬙ ⬎50 W/cm2 indicates the presence of the temporal
changes in fin length. In general, the heat transfer surface area
dry-out situation previously discussed.
does not affect nucleate boiling performance unless the number of
To better compare the effect of the microporous coating on the
active nucleation sites becomes limited and does not increase with
nucleate boiling performance, the average heat transfer coefficient
increasing heat flux. In contrast to the plain finned surfaces in Fig.
based on the total surface area of the L⫽1, 4, and 8 mm mi-
7, the microporous coated finned surfaces’ boiling curves in Fig. 8
croporous coated surfaces is plotted alongside the corresponding
are nearly coincident indicating that the microporous coating re-
plain surface data in Fig. 9. The much higher heat transfer coef-
moves this form of surface area dependency by providing a much
ficients of the microporous coated surfaces illustrate the profound
higher number of active nucleation sites. The effect of changes in
effect that the microporous coating has on the boiling perfor-
surface area only becomes evident at q CHF ⬙ , which is discussed mance. The maximum heat transfer coefficients for the L⫽4 and
later. 8 mm microporous coated surfaces occurred at about the same
Another interesting feature of the microporous coated surfaces
heat flux value as the slope change (q ⬙b ⬇50 W/cm2 ) and signifies
is the noticeable change in slope at q b⬙ ⬇50 W/cm2 . As discussed the point at which the temporal dry-out situation begins to occur
previously, a similar trend was observed in the plain surface data at the base of the fins. Although the heat transfer coefficient is
in Fig. 7 but at much lower heat flux values and was attributed to much higher for the microporous coated surfaces, the heat sink
the presence of a temporal dry-out situation caused by increased efficiency is only mildly reduced by about ten percent 共not
bubble departure resistance. It is postulated that the same degra- shown兲. This shows that the differences in nucleate boiling heat
dation mechanism is responsible for the change in slope of the transfer performance between the plain and microporous coated
microporous coated surfaces’ boiling curves shown in Fig. 8. surfaces is primarily due to the differences in surface
O’Connor and You 关12兴 observed that a number of small bubbles microstructure.
near the surface of their microporous coated horizontal flat heater
fed large hovering vapor mushrooms just prior to q CHF ⬙ . This Effect of Fin Length on CHF. Figure 10 shows the effect of
bubble departure behavior provides a more stable heat removal fin length on q CHF⬙ relative to the base surface area. Zuber’s 关17兴
mechanism and delays the formation of the temporal dry-out situ- correlation, Eq. 共1兲, is also plotted 共by multiplying q CHF,Z ⬙ by
ation due to increased vapor bubble residence time. A simple two A t /A b 兲 for reference. The plain surfaces appear to show a direct
line power-law curve-fit 共a simplified form of Rohsenow’s 关23兴 ⬙
relationship between q b,CHF ⬙ 兲, for
and fin length 共constant q t,CHF
correlation兲 given by fin lengths up to 4 mm. However, when increasing the fin length
q ⬙b ⫽1600•⌬T 2.4
b for q b⬙ ⬍5⫻105 W/m2 (3) ⬙
further, q b,CHF deviates from this trend showing significant degra-
dation. The dashed trendline in Fig. 10 illustrates this behavior.
q b⬙ ⫽1.08⫻105 •⌬T 0.62
b for q b⬙ ⬎5⫻105 W/m2 (4) The degradation in q CHF ⬙ is consistent with early discussions re-
is proposed to approximate the nucleate boiling curves of the mi- garding the degradation in nucleate boiling performance of the
croporous coated, finned surfaces shown in Fig. 8. The curve fit plain surfaces due to a non-boiling region at the tips of the fins
developed by Rainey 关24兴 for microporous coated flat surfaces of and appears to support the previously estimated optimum or tran-
different sizes and various inclination angles is also shown in Fig. sition point of L⬇5 mm. Kumagai et al.’s 关7兴 data shows a simi-
8 and is given by lar transition behavior in saturated R-113.
⬙
The microporous coated surfaces’ q b,CHF values, also shown in
q ⬙b ⫽1100•⌬T 2.4
b . (5) Fig. 10, appear to show a different behavior with fin length than
Fig. 10 Critical heat flux versus fin length Fig. 11 Normalized critical heat flux versus fin length in the
short fin region
Conclusions
the machined surfaces. From 1 to 8-mm fin lengths, q b,CHF ⬙ ap-
The pool boiling heat transfer performance of a ‘‘double en-
pears to follow a direct relationship with fin length. At a fin length
hancement’’ technique which combined a surface enhancement
of 8 mm, the effects of surface enhancement on q CHF ⬙ in Fig. 10 共microporous coating兲 and an area enhancement 共square pin fins兲
again becomes a factor. The microporous coated L⫽8 mm sur- was investigated using 1-cm2 flush-mounted copper surfaces. The
face repeatedly showed no degradation in q b,CHF⬙ as was observed effects of surface microstructure on the nucleate boiling curve
in the plain surface results. This seems to be due to the mi- were also investigated using three different surface conditions:
croporous coating’s nucleation enhancement characteristics. The plain polished 共from Chang and You 关15兴兲, plain machine rough-
relatively low fin-tip temperatures of the L⫽8 mm surfaces may ened 共present study兲, and microporous coated 共Chang and You
be too low to sustain nucleate boiling on the plain surface but are 关14兴兲. All tests were performed in saturated FC-72 at atmospheric
high enough to sustain nucleate boiling on the microporous coated pressure under increasing heat flux conditions.
surface. Applying the same one-dimensional conduction analysis
used for the plain surface, the fin-tip wall superheat (⌬T sat) of the • The effects of surface roughness on the pool boiling heat
microporous L⫽8 mm surface at the last steady-state point prior transfer of flat surfaces were found to be significant throughout
to CHF was roughly estimated at 19 K. Unlike the plain L the entire nucleate boiling curve. An increase in surface roughness
⫽8 mm surface, this estimated temperature is much higher than produced a decrease in incipient superheat and temperature over-
the minimum temperature required for nucleation, indicating a shoot and significantly increased the nucleate boiling heat transfer
boiling fin-tip condition. However, it is expected that the mi- coefficients and CHF. The effects are considered to be directly
croporous coated surfaces would experience degradation in q CHF ⬙ related to active nucleation site density differences.
similar to the plain surfaces at fin lengths greater than 8 mm. • For the plain finned surfaces, the heat transfer performance
Decreasing the fin length from 1 to 0 mm in Fig. 10 appears to can be significantly enhanced with the addition of square pins up
show a moderate deviation in q CHF ⬙ behavior for the microporous to a fin length of about 5 mm. Above 5 mm, it is believed that the
coated surfaces. To investigate this behavior, two additional mi- surface temperature of the tip portion of the fins is too low to
croporous coated surfaces with fin lengths of 0.25 and 0.5 mm sustain boiling which reduces the ‘‘effective’’ boiling area and
were tested and plotted in Fig. 11. The low fin length region of provides no additional improvements in heat transfer
Fig. 10 is shown in Fig. 11. The q CHF ⬙ data is normalized with performance.
⬙
respect to q CHF,Z . As can be seen from Fig. 11, q t,CHF⬙ for the • The microporous coated finned surfaces provide significantly
microporous coated surfaces drastically decreases with the addi- higher heat transfer coefficients over the plain finned surfaces. In
tion of fins and then becomes relatively constant with values simi- addition, the nucleate boiling curves of the microporous coated
⬙ for the flat surfaces is
lar to Zuber’s 关17兴 correlation. While q CHF surfaces collapse to one line regardless of fin length 共for fin
significantly affected by enhancement of the surface microstruc- lengths up to 8 mm兲 and are well correlated with a two-line
power-law curve fit.
ture 共as shown in Fig. 3兲, the comparable q CHF⬙ values of the plain
• It is believed that the presence of the pin fins produces a
and microporous finned surfaces indicate insensitivity to surface resistance to vapor bubble departure, which increases the bubble
enhancement. This indicates that q CHF⬙ for the present microporous residence time and causes a change in boiling curve slope of both
coated finned surfaces is limited by hydrodynamic mechanisms the plain and microporous finned surfaces. The longer bubble resi-
rather than by the surface microstructure 共number of active nucle- dence time would also increase the flow resistance on the ap-
ation sites兲. Unlike flat surfaces, finned surfaces have adjacent and proaching re-wetting liquid causing liquid starvation and ulti-
opposing walls, which increases the level of bubble crowding at a mately produce a temporal localized dry-out situation near the
given heat flux. As the heat flux approaches q CHF ⬙ , the increased base of the fins.
bubble crowding would more effectively block the re-wetting liq- • At fin lengths up to 4 mm, the CHF behavior for the present
uid flow and could cause q CHF ⬙ to occur at a lower heat flux than finned surfaces appears to be independent of surface microstruc-
an equivalent flat surface as was seen in Fig. 11 for the mi- ture. As a result, Zuber’s 关17兴 correlation provides a good estimate
croporous coated surfaces. of CHF for both the plain and microporous coated finned surfaces.
At a fin length of 8 mm, the plain finned surfaces deviate from this Cooled by Nucleate Boiling,’’ AIChE J., 13, No. 4, pp. 817–821.
关4兴 Liaw, S. P., and Yeh, R. H., 1994, ‘‘Fins With Temperature Dependent Sur-
trend due to the non-boiling tip condition previously stated; how- face Heat Flux-II. Multi-Boiling Heat Transfer,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 37,
ever, the microporous coated surface does not deviate due to the No. 10, pp. 1517–1524.
superior nucleation characteristics of the microporous coating. 关5兴 Klein, G. J., and Westwater, J. W., 1971, ‘‘Heat Transfer From Multiple
Spines to Boiling Liquids,’’ AIChE J., 17, No. 5, pp. 1050–1056.
关6兴 Mudawar, I., and Anderson, T. M., 1993, ‘‘Optimization of Enhanced Surfaces
Acknowledgments for High Flux Chip Cooling by Pool Boiling,’’ ASME J. Electron. Packag.,
115, pp. 89–100.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board primarily 关7兴 Kumagai, S., Jho, S. G., Hirono, Y., Shimada, R., and Takeyama, T., 1987,
supported this study: Advanced Research/Technology Program ‘‘Boiling Heat Transfer From Circular Surfaces With Rectangular Fin Array,’’
grant number 003656-014. The Advanced Technology Group of Heat Transf. Jpn. Res., 16, No. 2, pp. 69–81.
Nortel provided additional support. The authors extend their 关8兴 Yeh, R. H., 1997, ‘‘Analysis of Thermally Optimized Fin Array in Boiling
Liquids,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, No. 5, pp. 1035–1044.
thanks to the 3M Industrial Chemical Products Division for the 关9兴 Guglielmini, G., Misale, M., and Schenone, C., 1996, ‘‘Experiments on Pool
donation of FC-72 test liquid. Boiling of a Dielectric Fluid on Extended Surfaces,’’ Int. Commun. Heat Mass
Transfer , 23, No. 4, pp. 451–462.
Nomenclature 关10兴 Chaudri, I. H., and McDougall, I. R., 1969, ‘‘Aging Studies in Nucleate Pool
Boiling of Isopropyl Acetate and Perchlorethylene,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf.,
A ⫽ area, m2 12, pp. 681–688.
b ⫽ fin spacing, m 关11兴 Nishikawa, K., Fujita, Y., Ohta, H., and Hidaka, S., 1982, ‘‘Effect of the
g ⫽ acceleration due to gravity, m/s2 Surface Roughness on the Nucleate Boiling Heat Transfer Over the Wide
Range of Pressure,’’ Proceedings of the 7th International Heat Transfer Con-
h̄ ⫽ average heat transfer coefficient, W/m2-K ference, Munich, Germany, pp. 61–66.
h lv ⫽ latent heat of vaporization, J/kg 关12兴 O’Connor, J. P., and You, S. M., 1995, ‘‘A Painting Technique to Enhance
k ⫽ thermal conductivity, W/m-K Pool Boiling Heat Transfer in FC-72,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp.
387–393.
L ⫽ fin length, m 关13兴 Chang, J. Y., and You, S. M., 1997, ‘‘Boiling Heat Transfer Phenomena From
Lc ⫽ corrected fin length, m Micro-Porous and Porous Surfaces in Saturated FC-72,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
m ⫽ fin efficiency parameter Transf., 40, No. 18, pp. 4437–4447.
q⬙ ⫽ heat flux, W/m2 关14兴 Chang, J. Y., and You, S. M., 1997, ‘‘Enhanced Boiling Heat Transfer From
Micro-Porous Surfaces: Effects of a Coating Composition and Method,’’ Int. J.
t ⫽ fin width 共thickness兲, m Heat Mass Transf., 40, No. 18, pp. 4449–4460.
T ⫽ temperature, K 关15兴 Chang, J. Y., and You, S. M., 1996, ‘‘Heater Orientation Effects on Pool
⌬T sat ⫽ surface superheat; T w ⫺T sat , K Boiling of Micro-Porous-Enhanced Surfaces in Saturated FC-72,’’ ASME J.
⌬T b ⫽ base surface superheat; T b ⫺T sat , K Heat Transfer, 118, pp. 937–943.
关16兴 You, S. M., and O’Connor, J. P., 1998, ‘‘Boiling Enhancement Paint,’’ U. S.
␩f ⫽ individual fin efficiency Patent #5814392.
␩o ⫽ heat sink efficiency 关17兴 Zuber, N., 1959, ‘‘Hydrodynamic Aspects of Boiling Heat Transfer,’’ AEC
␳ ⫽ density, kg/m3 Report No. AECU-4439, Physics and Mathematics.
␴ ⫽ surface tension, N/m 关18兴 Polezhaev, Y. V., and Kovalev, S. A., 1990, ‘‘Modeling Heat Transfer With
Boiling on Porous Structures,’’ Therm. Eng., 37, No. 12, pp. 617–620.
Subscripts 关19兴 Tehver, J., 1992, ‘‘Influences of Porous Coating on the Boiling Burnout Heat
Flux,’’ Recent Adv. Heat Transfer, pp. 231–242.
CHF ⫽ critical heat flux 关20兴 Haramura, Y., and Katto, Y., 1983, ‘‘A New Hydrodynamic Model of the
b ⫽ base surface Critical Heat Flux, Applicable Widely to Both Pool and Forced Convective
Boiling on Submerged Bodies in Saturated Liquids,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf.,
l ⫽ saturated liquid 26, pp. 389–399.
sat ⫽ saturated conditions 关21兴 Srinivasan, V., and Shah, R. K., 1997, ‘‘Fin Efficiency of Extended Surfaces in
t ⫽ total surface Two-Phase Flow,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 18, No. 4, pp. 419–429.
v ⫽ saturated vapor 关22兴 Chang, J. Y., and You, S. M., 1997, ‘‘Pool Boiling Heat Transfer From In-
clined, Micro-Porous Surfaces Simulating Microelectronic Devices,’’ Pro-
w ⫽ heater surface 共wall兲 ceedings of the INTERpack ’97, E. Suhir, et al., eds, ASME, New York, pp.
Z ⫽ CHF prediction of Zuber 关17兴 2055–2063.
关23兴 Rohsenow, W. M., 1962, ‘‘A Method of Correlating Heat Transfer Data for
Surface Boiling of Liquids,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 74, pp. 969–975.
References 关24兴 Rainey, K. N., 1999, ‘‘Pool Boiling Heat Transfer from Plain and Microporous
关1兴 Bar-Cohen, A., 1992, ‘‘State-of-the-Art and Trends in the Thermal Packaging Finned Surfaces in Saturated FC-72,’’ M.S. thesis, The University of Texas at
of Electronic Equipment,’’ ASME J. Electron. Packag., 114, pp. 254–270. Arlington, Arlington, Texas.
关2兴 Haley, K. W., and Westwater, J. W., 1966, ‘‘Boiling Heat Transfer from a 关25兴 Bromley, J. A., 1950, ‘‘Heat Transfer in Stable Film Boiling,’’ Chem. Eng.
Single Fins,’’ Proceedings of the 3rd International Heat Transfer Conference, Prog., 46, No. 5, pp. 221–227.
Vol. 3, Chicago, pp. 245–253. 关26兴 Berenson, P. J., 1961, ‘‘Film Boiling Heat Transfer From a Horizontal Sur-
关3兴 Lai, F. S., and Hsu, Y. Y., 1967, ‘‘Temperature Distribution in a Fin Partially face,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 83, p. 351.
Optical Properties in the Visible
of Overfire Soot in Large Buoyant
Turbulent Diffusion Flames
Nonintrusive measurements of the optical properties of soot at visible wavelengths
S. S. Krishnan (351.2–800.0 nm) were completed for soot in the overfire region of large (2–7 kW)
buoyant turbulent diffusion flames burning in still air at standard temperature and pres-
K.-C. Lin sure, where soot properties are independent of position and characteristic flame residence
time for a particular fuel. Soot from flames fueled with gaseous (acetylene, ethylene,
G. M. Faeth1 propylene, and butadiene) and liquid (benzene, cyclohexane, toluene, and n-heptane)
3000 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building hydrocarbon fuels were studied. Scattering and extinction measurements were interpreted
e-mail: gmfaeth@umich.edu to find soot optical properties using the Rayleigh-Debye-Gans/polydisperse-fractal-
aggregate theory after establishing that this theory provided good predictions of scatter-
Department of Aerospace Engineering, ing patterns over the present test range. Effects of fuel type on soot optical properties
The University of Michigan, were comparable to experimental uncertainties. Dimensionless extinction coefficients
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2140 were relatively independent of wavelength for wavelengths of 400–800 nm and yielded a
mean value of 8.4 in good agreement with earlier measurements. Present measurements
of the refractive index function for absorption, E 共 m 兲 , were in good agreement with
earlier independent measurements of Dalzell and Sarofim and Stagg and Charalam-
popoulos. Present values of the refractive index function for scattering, F 共 m 兲 , however,
only agreed with these earlier measurements for wavelengths of 400–550 nm but other-
wise increased with increasing wavelength more rapidly than the rest. The comparison
between present and earlier measurements of the real and imaginary parts of the complex
refractive index was similar to E 共 m 兲 and F 共 m 兲 . 关S0022-1481共00兲02203-9兴
Keywords: Combustion, Fire, Flame, Participating Media, Radiation
Introduction tion and compression as well as potential effects of surface irregu-

larities on measured reflectance properties 共关2,5,9兴兲. In order to
Information about the optical properties of soot is needed to
develop reliable nonintrusive 共optical兲 measurements of soot avoid these error sources, other studies involved in situ measure-
properties and estimates of continuum radiation due to soot in ments of extinction and scattering 共关2,10–12兴兲; unfortunately,
flame environments. Substantial information about the optical these studies have a number of deficiencies as well: Soot structure
properties of soot is already known, as follows: Soot consists of generally was not characterized, Rayleigh and Mie scattering ap-
nearly monodisperse spherical primary particles that collect into proximations were used to analyze the measurements that have
mass fractal aggregates having broad size distributions, soot pri- not proven to be very effective for soot aggregates, questionable
mary particle diameters and aggregate sizes vary widely but soot approximations involving either graphitic-based dispersion mod-
fractal properties appear to be relatively universal, soot optical els or Kramers-Krönig causality relationships were adopted in
properties in the visible can be approximated reasonably well by some cases, and there has only been limited consideration of ef-
Rayleigh-Debye-Gans scattering from polydisperse mass fractal fects of fuel type on soot refractive index properties 共关1,13–16兴兲.
aggregates 共called RDG-PFA theory兲, and current estimates of A recent study of the refractive index properties of soot due to
soot optical properties in flame environments are mainly limited Wu et al. 关17兴 sought to resolve concerns about earlier work.
by excessive uncertainties about soot refractive index properties These experiments considered soot emitted from buoyant turbu-
共see Faeth and Köylü 关1兴 and references cited therein兲. Motivated lent diffusion flames in the long residence time regime where soot
by these observations, the objective of the present investigation properties are relatively independent of position in the fuel-lean
was to measure soot optical properties at visible wavelengths, 共overfire兲 region and residence time 共关18–19兴兲. Measurements in-
emphasizing dimensionless extinction coefficients and refractive cluded soot density, structure, gravimetric volume fraction, and
indices. scattering and absorption properties. These data were analyzed to
Earlier studies of soot dimensionless extinction coefficient and find soot dimensionless extinction coefficients, fractal dimensions,
refractive index properties in the visible are briefly reviewed in and refractive index properties based on RDG-PFA scattering
the following, more details can be found in Charalampopoulos theory. RDG-PFA theory was successfully evaluated and soot re-
关2兴, Faeth and Köylü 关1兴, Jullien and Botet 关3兴, Köylü and Faeth fractive indices were independent of fuel type and in good agree-
关4兴, Tien and Lee 关5兴, Viskanta and Mengüc 关6兴, and references ment with earlier work. On the other hand, dimensionless extinc-
cited therein. Some past determinations of soot refractive indices tion coefficients were significantly smaller 共by 40 percent兲 than
involve ex situ reflectivity measurements of compressed soot earlier measurements reported by Dobbins et al. 关20兴 and Choi
samples 共关7–9兴兲; these results have been questioned, however, due et al. 关21兴. This last difficulty clearly raises concerns about the
to potential changes of soot properties caused by sample collec- associated measurements of refractive index properties reported
1
by Wu et al. 关17兴.
To whom correspondence should be addressed.
In view of these observations, the present study of soot optical
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, August 4, properties in the visible was undertaken, considering soot emitted
1999; revision received, Feb. 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: J. Gore. from buoyant turbulent diffusion flames in the long residence time
regime. The approach was similar to Wu et al. 关17兴 where mea- agreement between present and past measurements of the dimen-
surements of gravimetric soot volume fractions and soot extinc- sionless extinction coefficients of soot than before.
tion and scattering properties were analyzed using RDG-PFA
theory to find dimensionless extinction coefficients, fractal dimen- Optical Measurements. Soot scattering and extinction prop-
sions, and refractive index properties. Flame conditions included a erties were measured following Köylü and Faeth 关14,15兴. Light
variety of gaseous and liquid hydrocarbon fuels burning in still sources used for measurements at various wavelengths were as
air. follows: 351.2, 457.9, 488.0, and 514.5 nm using an argon-ion
laser 共4W, Coherent Innova 90-4兲; 632.8 nm using a He-Ne laser
共28 mW, Melles Griot MG53036兲; 405.0 nm using a mercury
lamp 共100W, Oriel 6333兲; and 800.0 nm 共for extinction measure-
Experimental Methods ments only兲 using a laser diode 共700 mW, SDL-2360-P3兲. The
incident beams were passed through a polarization rotator and
Apparatus. Present test flames were large buoyant turbulent mechanical chopper and then focused at the axis of the exhaust
diffusion flames burning in still air within the long residence time duct. The collecting optics for scattering measurements were
regime. The test flames were provided by gas and liquid-fueled mounted on a turntable so that scattering angles of 5–160 deg
burners injecting fuel gases vertically upward. Soot properties could be considered. The collecting optics had a collection angle
were measured by collecting the combustion products in a hood of 0.7 msr, dichroic sheet polarizer filters 共1 and 10 nm band-
having a 152-mm diameter vertical exhaust duct. Measurements widths for laser and lamp sources, respectively兲, neutral density
were made at the exit of the exhaust duct where properties across filters and a photodetector. The extinction measurements em-
the flow were nearly uniform; nevertheless, soot concentrations ployed similar but rigidly mounted collection optics, designed fol-
were measured along the optical path so that extinction measure- lowing Manickavasagam and Mengüc 关23兴 to reduce contributions
ments could be referenced to conditions at the duct axis where all of forward scattering to less than one percent. An optical system
other optical measurements were made. Note that using a collec- housing and darkroom conditions in the laboratory minimized op-
tion system in this way does not affect soot structure and optical tical noise due to ambient lighting.
properties because they are universal in the overfire region for Rayleigh scattering from propane gas was used to provide an
present test conditions 共关14兴兲. A water-cooled burner having a absolute calibration of the scattering measurements. Absolute dif-
diameter of 50 mm described by Sivathanu and Faeth 关18兴 was ferential scattering cross sections of soot were found from ratios
used for the gas-fueled flames. Uncooled burners having diam- of the detector signal for soot and propane, based on the Rayleigh
eters of 51 and 102 mm were used for the liquid-fueled flames, scattering properties of propane from Rudder and Bach 关24兴 and
adjusting the fuel flow rate to attain steady pool fires with the Dyer 关25兴. Total volumetric scattering cross sections were found
liquid surface roughly 10–20 mm below the burner exit. by integrating volumetric differential scattering cross sections
Sampling Measurements. Aside from routine sampling mea- over the spherical surface while extrapolating to find contributions
surements of gas temperatures and compositions at the measuring in the near forward and backward scattering directions as dis-
location, sampling measurements included soot structure and cussed by Wu et al. 关17兴; the corrections of the total volumetric
gravimetric volume fractions. Other soot properties of interest scattering cross sections due to these extrapolations did not ex-
during the present study, e.g., soot density and composition, were ceed 25 percent.
drawn from Köylü and Faeth 关14,19兴 and Wu et al. 关17兴 for simi-
lar soot populations.
Soot structure was found by thermophoretic sampling and Theoretical Methods
analysis using transmission electron microscopy 共TEM兲, follow-
ing Köylü and Faeth 关19兴. Sampling was carried by inserting TEM Dimensionless Extinction Coefficients. The dimensionless
grids into the flow at the exhaust duct axis. Sampling times were extinction coefficient is a useful optical property that provides a
selected to achieve less than ten percent coverage of the grid simple relationship between extinction and soot volume fractions
surface with soot in order to avoid overlapping aggregates on the 共关20,21兴兲. This parameter was found for present test conditions
grid. Effects of aggregate size on sampling bias were less than 20 based on Dobbins et al. 关20兴, as follows:
percent from estimates based on Rosner et al. 关22兴. Samples of K e ⫽⫺␭ ln共 I/I o 兲 / 共 L f v 兲 . (1)
400 primary particles selected from more than 50 aggregates were
used to find the mean value of d p with an experimental uncer- Values of f v were nearly constant 共varying 14 to 20 percent兲 over
tainty less than two percent 共95 percent confidence兲. the present optical path; nevertheless, an appropriate average
Gravimetric volume fractions were measured following Wu value was used in Eq. 共1兲 based on several gravimetric measure-
et al. 关17兴. This involved sampling the flow and measuring the ments of f v along the path. Experimental uncertainties of K e 共95
volumes of soot and gas collected. The sampling probe was percent confidence兲 varied between 14 percent 共acetylene at 351.2
aligned with the exhaust duct axis and had a 13-mm-diameter inlet nm兲 and 24 percent 共n-heptane at 800 nm兲, dominated by uncer-
connected to a 47-mm-diameter Gelman filter. The filter was con- tainties in the soot volume fraction determinations along the opti-
nected to a vacuum pump through a flowmeter and valve. The cal path.
flowmeter was fitted with a manometer and calibrated over the Refractive Index Properties. Measurements of refractive in-
required range of inlet pressures and flow rates using a wet test dex properties were based on RDG-PFA theory, adopting the ap-
meter. Soot samples were collected for a timed period using two proach of Wu et al. 关17兴, therefore, only results from RDG-PFA
filters, one in the filter holder and the second to mechanically theory specifically used during the present study are discussed in
collect soot from the sample line and filter holder. The mass of the following. The main assumptions of RDG-PFA theory are as
soot was found by weighing the filters before and after sampling follows: Individual primary particles satisfy the Rayleigh scatter-
using an electronic balance. Given these measurements, the soot ing approximation, soot aggregates satisfy the Rayleigh-Debye-
volume fraction could be computed from the known soot density. Gans 共RDG兲 scattering approximation, primary particles are
Sample times were lengthy and several samples along the optical spherical and monodisperse, primary particles just touch one an-
path and repeat samples were required; therefore, a laser extinc- other, the number of primary particles per aggregate satisfies a
tion system was used across the sampling duct exit to insure that log-normal probability distribution function, and the aggregates
flame conditions were accurately repeated. In addition, gravimet- are mass fractal-like objects that satisfy the following relationship
ric soot volume fractions were measured at more locations along 共关3兴兲;
the optical path than before. These two changes from the approach
used by Wu et al. 关17兴 are felt to be mainly responsible for better N⫽k f 共 R g /d p 兲 D f . (2)
These approximations have proven to be satisfactory during past Table 2 Summary of soot structure propertiesa
evaluations for soot at a variety of conditions 共关14–16,19兴兲; they
were also evaluated by comparing predicted and measured scat- dp
Fuel 共nm兲 N̄ Ng ␴g D f ( ␴ D) b
tering patterns during the present investigation, as discussed later.
Values of the measured volumetric vv scattering cross section, Gas-fueled flames:
Acetylene 47 417 214 3.3 1.79共0.01兲
Q̄ avv (qd p ), satisfied power-law behavior at large angles, similar to Ethylene 32 467 290 2.7 1.80共0.01兲
results illustrated for soot emitted from gas fueled flames by Wu Propylene 41 460 227 3.0 1.79共0.02兲
et al. 关17兴. Thus, values of the fractal dimension, D f , needed to Butadiene 42c ¯ ¯ ¯ 1.79共0.03兲
find the refractive index function for scattering, F(m), were found Liquid-fueled flames:
Benzene 50 552 261 3.5 1.77共0.05兲
based on the results of RDG-PFA theory in the large-angle re- Cyclohexane 37c ¯ ¯ ¯ 1.80共0.06兲
gime, as follows: Toluene 51 526 252 3.2 1.79共0.07兲
n-Heptane 35 260 173 2.4 1.79共0.06兲
D f ⫽⫺d ln共 Q̄ avv 共 pd p 兲兲 /d ln共 qd p 兲 (3)
a
where all parameters on the right-hand side of Eq. 共3兲 are known Soot in the overfire region of buoyant turbulent diffusion flames burning in still air
in the long residence time regime with ambient pressures and temperatures of 99
from the measurements. Experimental uncertainties 共95 percent ⫾0.5 kPa and 298⫾3 K, respectively. Soot density of 1880 kg/m3 from Wu et al.
confidence兲 of the D f measurements are less than five percent. 关17兴; k f ⫽8.5 with a standard deviation of 0.5 from Köylü et al. 关26兴. Values of d p ,
Values of the refractive index function for absorption, E(m), N̄, N g , and ␴ g from Köylü et al. 关27兴 and Köylü and Faeth 关14兴 except when noted
were found from RDG-PFA theory, as follows: otherwise. Listed in order of increasing molecular weight for gas and liquid fuels,
respectively.
b
From present scattering measurements in the wide-angle regime averaged
E 共 m 兲 ⫽␭ 共 Q̄ ae ⫺Q̄ as 兲 / 共 6 ␲ f v 兲 (4) over wavelengths of 351.2–632.8 nm with standard deviations for each fuel in
parentheses.
where Q̄ ae
and Q̄ as
are the measured volumetric extinction and total c
From present TEM measurements.
scattering cross sections while f v is the gravimetrically measured
soot volume fraction. Experimental uncertainties 共95 percent con-
fidence兲 of E(m) varied between 14 percent 共acetylene at 351.2
nm兲 and 24 percent 共n-heptane at 632.8 nm兲. Corresponding val- n-heptane兲 hydrocarbon fuels burning in still air from burners
ues of the refractive index function for scattering, F(m), were having diameters of 50–102 mm with heat release rates of 2–7
found from RDG-PFA theory in the large-angle regime, as fol- kW. Characteristic residence times were computed using the cor-
lows: relation of Sivathanu and Faeth 关18兴 finding values of 254–333
ms which places present flames in the long residence time regime
F 共 m 兲 ⫽2␭ 4 共 qd p 兲 D f Q̄ avv 共 qd p 兲 / 共 3 ␲ 3 k f f v 兲 (5)
共关19兴兲. Present measurements were confined to the fuel-lean over-
where all parameters on the right-hand side of this equation are fire region of the flames.
either known or measured after adopting k f ⫽8.5 based on the Soot structure properties for present test conditions are summa-
measurements of Köylü et al. 关26兴 for soot similar to the present rized in Table 2. Primary particle diameters are in the range
measurements; e.g., soot emitted from large buoyant turbulent- 32–51 nm, with standard deviations of 17–21 percent of mean
diffusion flames in the long residence time regime and fueled with values and were reasonably monodisperse as concluded by Köylü
acetylene, propylene, ethylene, and propane. The experimental and Faeth 关19兴 for similar conditions. For the present ranges of
uncertainties 共95 percent confidence兲 of F(m) varied between 19 primary particle diameters and wavelengths, values of the primary
percent 共acetylene at 351.2 nm兲 and 26 percent 共n-heptane at particle size parameters, x p ⫽2 ␲ d p /␭, were in the range 0.16–
632.8 nm兲. Finally, given values of E(m) and F(m), their defini- 0.46, with the maximum value being the largest yet considered for
tions provide two equations to solve for the real and imaginary evaluating RDG-PFA predictions of soot optical properties. The
parts of the soot refractive index, m⫽n⫹i ␬ ; the experimental mean numbers of primary particles per aggregate were known for
uncertainties of n and ␬ are comparable to E(m) and F(m), re- soot from a number of the fuels from Köylü and Köylü and Faeth
spectively. 关14兴 and these values are summarized in the table. The values of
d p and N̄ yield typical aggregate dimensions of 1000–10,000 nm
Results and Discussion which is larger than the visible wavelength range and provides
significant potential for scattering 共关1兴兲. Values of the fractal di-
Test Conditions. Present test conditions are summarized in mensions were measured as described in connection with Eq. 共3兲
Table 1. The flames involved both gaseous 共acetylene, ethylene, and were found to be properly independent of wavelength for a
propylene, butadiene兲 and liquid 共benzene, cyclohexane, toluene, given fuel within experimental uncertainties; therefore, mean val-
ues of D f for each fuel are summarized in the table. It is evident
that effects of fuel type are also small, yielding a mean value of
Table 1 Summary of test conditionsa D f ⫽1.79 with a standard deviation of 0.05 when averaged over
all wavelengths and fuels.
Formula M d Q̇ t rb
Fuel 共⫺兲共kg/kgmol兲共mm兲共kW兲共ms兲 Dimensionless Extinction Coefficients. Present measure-
ments of dimensionless extinction coefficients are plotted as a
Gas-fueled flames: function of fuel type 共fuel molecular weight兲 and wavelength in
Acetylene C2H2 26.04 50 6.16 329
Ethylene C2H4 28.05 50 5.14 317 Fig. 1. The mean value of present measurements averaged over all
Propylene C3H6 42.08 50 6.58 333 fuels and wavelengths is 8.4 with a standard deviation of 1.5. In
Butadiene C4H6 54.09 50 1.70 254 addition, the mean value averaged over all fuels at each wave-
Liquid-fueled flames: length is shown as a dashed line on the plots for reference pur-
Benzene C6H6 78.11 51 3.40 292
Cyclohexane C6H12 84.16 102 5.00 315 poses. These average values of K e at each wavelength considered
Toluene C7H8 92.13 51 2.50 274 during the present measurements are summarized in Table 3.
n-Heptane C7H16 100.20 102 4.10 303 There is a tendency for overfire soot from acetylene and n-heptane
to yield dimensionless extinction coefficients near uncertainty
a
Soot properties measured in the overfire region of buoyant turbulent diffusion flames limits that are smaller and larger than the rest, respectively. It is
burning in still air in the long residence time regime with ambient pressures and
temperatures of 99⫾0.5 kPa and 298⫾3 K, respectively. Listed in the order of in-
felt, however, that these differences may be due to experimental
creasing molecular weight for gas and liquid fuels, respectively. difficulties. In particular, acetylene soot involved the presence of a
b
Computed from correlation of Sivathanu and Faeth 关18兴. tarry residue not seen for soot from the other fuels which could
Fig. 2 Measured dimensionless extinction coefficients of soot
in the visible as a function of wavelength. References cited in
figure are Refs. †20‡ and †21‡.
due. Taken together, these results suggest remarkably little varia-

tion of K e for wavelengths of 400–800 nm. In contrast, the earlier
measurements of Wu et al. 关17兴 for soot emitted from acetylene,
propylene, ethylene, and propane-fueled flames in the long resi-
Fig. 1 Measured dimensionless extinction coefficients of soot dence time regime yielded a smaller value of K e ⫽5.1 with a
in the visible as a function of fuel molecular weight and standard deviation of 0.5, although their observations of small
wavelength
effects of fuel type and wavelength were similar to the present
study. Repeated testing could not confirm the findings of Wu et al.
关17兴 during the present study, however, and their observations will
cause overestimation of the soot volume fraction while n-heptane not be considered any further in the following.
measurements involved small soot concentrations and signal-to- It is interesting that K e is relatively independent of wavelength
noise ratios of extinction measurements. Thus, in view of the in the visible in spite of the strong variation of absorption and
rather similar values of dimensionless extinction coefficients of scattering cross sections for the RDG scattering approximation.
the other six fuels, it is concluded that effects of soot type on this For example, Q ap ⬃1/␭ and Q sp ⬃Q vv p
⬃1/␭ 4 for primary particles
parameter are small. Similar small effects of fuel type were also under the RDG scattering approximation. Scattering from aggre-
observed by the soot refractive index properties considered during gates of primary particles under RDG-PFA theory exhibits a re-
the present investigation as will be discussed subsequently. Nota- duced sensitivity to changes of wavelength; nevertheless, the gen-
bly, Sivathanu et al. 关28兴 find similar relatively small effects of eral trend toward decreasing optical cross sections with increasing
fuel type on the specific absorption coefficients of soot in pre- wavelength when refractive indices remain constant is similar.
mixed flames fueled with methane, propane, and ethylene. Thus, the relatively small variation of K e with wavelength for the
Values of the dimensionless extinction coefficient, averaged present test range requires compensating variations of the refrac-
over all the fuels at each wavelength, are plotted as a function of tive index functions, E(m) and F(m). Results to be considered
wavelength in Fig. 2. Other measurements of K e for soot formed subsequently will show that this is the case.
from the combustion of crude oil from Dobbins et al. 关20兴 and
from the combustion of acetylene from Choi et al. 关21兴 are also Scattering Patterns. The RDG-PFA scattering theory was
shown on the plot for comparison with the present measurements. evaluated for soot resulting from combustion of each fuel at each
Clearly, the results of all three studies are in excellent agreement. wavelength in order to justify the present approach to find soot
In addition, the results of Choi et al. 关21兴 tend to support the idea refractive index properties nonintrusively. Typical examples of
that present results for acetylene were affected by the tarry resi- this evaluation can be seen from the scattering patterns illustrated
in Fig. 3. The results shown in this illustration represent the lim-
iting scattering conditions for the present experiments: toluene at
Table 3 Refractive index properties and dimensionless extinc- a wavelength of 351.2 nm which represents the largest value of x p
tion coefficients in the visiblea and thus potentially most questionable condition for the use of the
evaluation; and ethylene at a wavelength of 632.8 nm which rep-
␭ 共nm兲 E(m) F(m) F(m)/E(m) d n ␬ Ke resents the smallest value of x p and thus potentially the least ques-
351.2 0.24共0.06兲 0.13共0.03兲 0.63 1.38 0.44 7.4共1.3兲
tionable conditions for the use of the RDG scattering approxima-
405.0b ¯ ¯ 0.76 ¯ ¯ 8.8共1.0兲e tion but still a concern because soot refractive indices tend to
457.9 0.27共0.06兲c 0.26共0.07兲c 0.87 1.64 0.62 8.7共1.5兲 increase with increasing wavelength which could lead to failure of
488.0 0.28共0.04兲 0.25共0.07兲 0.93 1.60 0.62 8.7共1.9兲 the RDG scattering approximation 共关17兴兲. The agreement between
514.5 0.29共0.04兲 0.27共0.06兲 0.98 1.62 0.66 8.6共1.5兲 measurements and predictions is seen to be excellent at both lim-
632.8 0.27共0.04兲 0.44共0.15兲 1.17 1.99 0.89 8.4共1.0兲
800.0b ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ 9.3共1.5兲f its, justifying the use of RDG scattering theory to find refractive
index properties for present conditions. Furthermore, plots of vv
a
Standard deviations are shown in brackets. cross sections as functions of the modulus of the scattering vector
b
Only extinction measurements were made at 405.0 and 800.0 nm. 共see Wu et al. 关17兴 for typical examples兲 and the invariance of
c
Benzene and toluene were excluded at 457.9 nm. fractal dimensions with wavelength discussed earlier, all show
d
Values of F(m)/E(m) were obtained from the correlation for all fuels in studies
made in the visible thus far.
that present scattering measurements properly reached the large-
e
Measurements were not made for the gaseous fuels and n-heptane at 405.0 nm. angle 共power-law兲 regime required to use Eqs. 共3兲 and 共5兲 in order
f
Measurements were not made for the gaseous fuels at 800 nm. to find refractive index properties.
Fig. 3 Typical measured and predicted scattering patterns of
soot in the visible Fig. 5 Measured values of the refractive index function F „ m …
of soot in the visible as a function of fuel molecular weight and
wavelength
The refractive index function E(m) was found from Eq. 共4兲
based on present measurements of volumetric extinction and total
The refractive index function, F(m), was found from Eq. 共5兲,
scattering cross sections, and the gravimetric measurements of
based on present measurements of absolute vv cross sections in
soot volume fraction. The resulting values of E(m) are plotted as
the large-angle regime, present gravimetric measurements of soot
a function of fuel type 共fuel molecular weight兲 and wavelength in
volume fraction, TEM measurements of primary particle diam-
Fig. 4. Mean values of E(m), averaged over all the fuels, are
eter, present measurements of the fractal dimensions, and values
shown on the plots for each wavelength; these average values of
of the fractal prefactor from Köylü et al. 关26兴. The resulting val-
E(m) are also summarized in Table 3. Effects of fuel type for
ues of F(m) are plotted as a function of fuel type 共fuel molecular
E(m) are qualitatively similar to those for the related property K e
weight兲 and wavelength in Fig. 5. Mean values, averaged over all
with values for acetylene and n-heptane departing from the mean
the fuels, are also shown on the plots for each wavelength; these
values to a somewhat larger degree than the rest 共joined by ethyl-
average values of F(m) are also summarized in Table 3. In this
ene for E(m) to a greater degree than for K e 兲. Nevertheless, ef-
case, values for acetylene continued to be smaller than the rest
fects of fuel type on these plots are within experimental uncertain-
which may be attributable to the tarry residue observed for this
ties and it is concluded that E(m) is independent of fuel type over
soot, discussed in connection with the dimensionless extinction
the present test range.
coefficient measurements. Scatter of the measurements of F(m)
also progressively increases with increasing wavelength due to
progressively increasing difficulties in maintaining adequate
signal-to-noise ratios for the Rayleigh scattering measurements
from propane gas used to provide an absolute calibration of the
soot scattering measurements. Thus, effects of fuel type on these
plots do not exhibit any consistent trends and are comparable to
experimental uncertainties and it is concluded that F(m) is inde-
pendent of fuel type over the test range, similar to E(m).
Present mean values of E(m) and F(m), averaged over all
fuels types, are plotted as a function of wavelength in the visible
in Fig. 6. Present results were used in conjunction with the earlier
laser extinction measurements of Köylü and Faeth 关16兴 in order to
obtain another nonintrusive estimate of E(m) and F(m). This was
done by matching the values of E(m) for the two data sets at
514.5 nm and then using present measurements of ␳ sa to compute
values of E(m) from the extinction measurements of Köylü and
Faeth 关16兴 in the visible. Then values of F(m) were obtained from
these estimates of E(m) using a general correlation for the ratio
F(m)/E(m) developed from present measurements which is sum-
marized in Table 4. These calculations were completed for acety-
lene, propylene, and ethylene soot which were the only fuels con-
sidered during both studies; notably, Köylü and Faeth 关16兴 did not
observe significant effects of fuel type during their investigation.
The agreement between values of E(m) and F(m) from the
present investigation and those extended from Köylü and Faeth
Fig. 4 Measured values of the refractive index function, E „ m …, 关16兴 is excellent for wavelengths greater than 400 nm but present
of soot in the visible as a function of fuel molecular weight and results are somewhat smaller than the extended results as the near
wavelength u v is approached. The present values of E(m) and F(m) progres-
关16兴 that are significantly larger than the present results at 351.2
nm, as discussed earlier. In this region, however, present results
are thought to be more reliable because they do not involve the
approximations used to extend the results of Köylü and Faeth
关16兴, they consider many more fuels, and given the behavior of
the results of Köylü and Faeth 关16兴 at this wavelength, it would be
very difficult to rationalize the behavior of K e observed in Fig. 2
near this wavelength.
Present measurements of F(m) in Fig. 6 agree with the results
extended from Köylü and Faeth 关16兴 for wavelengths greater than
400 nm but only agree with the ex situ studies for the wavelength
range 400–500 nm. Overall, present measurements increase more
rapidly with increasing wavelengths than the ex situ measure-
ments illustrated in Fig. 6. Present results are consistent with the
qualitative trends of F(m) observed by Wu et al. 关17兴 not plotted
in Fig. 6, although the magnitudes of F(m) differ from present
results due to the problems discussed in connection with the mea-
surements of K e . In addition, the rapid increase of F(m) with
wavelength in the visible is also consistent with values of K e
Fig. 6 Measured mean values of the refractive index func- relatively independent of wavelength in the visible as discussed
tions, E „ m … and F „ m …, of soot in the visible as a function of earlier. Finally, somewhat reduced values of E(m) and F(m) for
wavelength. References cited in figure are Refs. †8‡, †16‡, and the ex situ measurements compared to the present in situ measure-
†29‡. ments, as seen in Fig. 6, is consistent with problems of correcting
the ex situ measurements for effects of surface voidage of the
compressed soot samples used for reflectometry measurements in
sively increase with increasing wavelength in the near u v similar the visible—a criticism of the ex situ measurements of soot re-
to the observations of Vaglieco et al. 关12兴, and do not suggest an fractive index properties that has been raised by Felske et al. 关9兴.
approach to a resonance condition for soot which would cause
E(m) and F(m) to peak in this region, similar to the behavior of Refractive Indices. Given E(m) and F(m), the real and
graphite 共see 关10,11兴兲. Increasing E(m) and F(m) with increasing imaginary parts of the refractive indices of soot can be found as a
wavelength over the present test range is not unexpected, how- function of wavelength. Similar to the other refractive index prop-
ever, because this behavior is needed to explain why K e is rela- erties of soot, effects of fuel type on n and ␬ were comparable to
tively independent of wavelength in the visible for soot aggregates experimental uncertainties. Thus, values of n and ␬ averaged over
that satisfy RDG-PFA scattering behavior. the present results for soot from all the fuels, are plotted as a
Several earlier measurements of E(m) and F(m) are illustrated function of wavelength in Fig. 7; these average values of n and ␬
in Fig. 6. These measurements include the classical ex situ reflec- are also summarized in Table 3. Several earlier measurements are
tometry measurements for soot in the fuel-lean region of acetylene also shown on the plots as discussed in connection with E(m) and
and propane/air diffusion flames 共taken as the average for the two F(m), e.g., the in situ results extended from Köylü and Faeth 关16兴
fuels兲 due to Dalzell and Sarofim 关8兴 and the more recent ex situ and the ex situ results from the reflectometry measurements of
reflectometry measurements for soot in premixed propane/air Dalzell and Sarofim 关8兴 and Stagg and Charalampopoulos 关29兴.
flames due to Stagg and Charalampopoulos 关29兴. Other ex situ Present values of n agree with the other measurements well within
reflectometry measurements for soot in the fuel-lean regions of experimental uncertainties. On the other hand, present values of ␬
acetylene and propane/air diffusion flames due to Batten 关7兴 have only agree with the other measurements within experimental un-
been omitted from the plot because they yield values of E(m) and certainties for wavelengths of 400–550 nm and generally increase
F(m) roughly half the values of the rest and these results have not with increasing wavelength more rapidly than the rest. An excep-
been subsequently duplicated. Finally, earlier well-known in situ
measurements of soot refractive index properties in the visible due
to Lee and Tien 关11兴, Chang and Charalampopoulos 关10兴, and
Vaglieco et al. 关12兴 have not been included on the plots due to the
difficulties with these measurements mentioned earlier; e.g., they
all involve questionable models for the optical properties of soot,
some involve questionable soot transport properties in cases
where dynamic scattering measurements were used to estimate
soot aggregate properties, and some involve questionable approxi-
mations associated with either graphitic-based dispersion models
or Kramers-Kronig causality relationships used to close the pro-
cedure to find soot refractive indices.
Present measurements of E(m) illustrated in Fig. 6 generally
fall within the span of the other measurements, agreeing within
experimental uncertainties with the other measurements for wave-
lengths greater than 400 nm. The only measurements of E(m) at
shorter wavelengths are the extended results of Köylü and Faeth
Table 4 Correlation of F „ m …Õ E „ m … a
Wavelength 共nm兲 351 400 425 450 480 514 633

Fig. 7 Measured mean, real, and imaginary parts of the com-
F(m)/E(m) 0.63 0.75 0.80 0.85 0.91 0.98 1.17 plex refractive index of soot in the visible as a function of
wavelength. References cited in figure are Refs. †8‡, †16‡, and
a
Correlation developed using present measurements for all fuels. †29‡.
tion not shown on the plot, however, is a recent theoretical esti- type on soot refractive index properties in the visible offer sub-
mate of ␬ ⫽0.8 at 632.8 nm made by Mulholland and Mountain stantial reductions of effort for estimating soot optical and radia-
关30兴 based on the measurements of the specific extinction coeffi- tive properties that definitely merits further study.
cients of acetylene and ethylene soot due to Mulholland and Choi
关31兴, combined with a coupled dipole calculation, which is in
excellent agreement with present measurements at this Acknowledgments
wavelength. This research was supported by the Building and Fire Research
laboratory of the Institute of Standards and Technology, Grant
Conclusions Nos. 60NANB4D1696 and 60NANB8D0084, with H. R. Baum
serving as Scientific Officer.
In situ observations of soot optical properties were undertaken
for wavelengths of 351.2–800.0 nm considering soot emitted
from buoyant turbulent diffusion flames in the long residence time Nomenclature
regime where the properties of soot in the overfire region are C ⫽ optical cross section
independent of position and characteristic flame residence time. d ⫽ burner diameter
Soot was observed for a variety of gas and liquid hydrocarbon dp ⫽ primary particle diameter
fuels 共acetylene, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, cyclo- Df ⫽ mass fractal dimension
hexane, toluene, and n-heptane兲 burning in still air. Data analysis E(m) ⫽ refractive index function for absorption,
was based on RDG-PFA scattering theory for soot, which was Im共共m2⫺1兲/共m2⫹2兲兲
evaluated successfully for primary particle size parameters as fv ⫽ soot volume fraction
large as 0.46 at a wavelength of 351.2 nm and real and imaginary F(m) ⫽ refractive index function for scattering,
parts of the complex refractive index of soot that reached values
兩共m2⫺1兲/共m2⫹2兲兩2
of 1.99 and 0.89 at a wavelength of 632.8 nm. Major conclusions
i ⫽ (⫺1) 1/2
of the study are as follows:
I ⫽ light intensity
1 Present dimensionless extinction coefficients were relatively k ⫽ wave number, 2␲/␭
independent of fuel type and wavelength 共for wavelengths of kf ⫽ fractal prefactor
400–800 nm兲 yielding an average value of 8.4 and a standard Ke ⫽ dimensionless extinction coefficient
deviation of 1.5. These results are in excellent agreement with L ⫽ light path length
earlier measurements of Dobbins et al. 关13兴 and Choi et al. 关21兴 m ⫽ soot refractive index, n⫹i ␬
for similar overfire soot populations, resolving discrepancies be- M ⫽ molecular weight
tween these and earlier studies and the findings of Wu et al. 关17兴. n ⫽ real part of soot refractive index
2 Present values of the refractive index function for absorption, N ⫽ number of primary particles per aggregate
E(m), were relatively independent of fuel type and agreed within Ng ⫽ geometric mean of the number of particles per aggre-
experimental uncertainties with earlier ex situ reflectometry mea- gate
surements of Dalzell and Sarofim 关8兴 and Stagg and Charalam- q ⫽ modulus of scattering vector, 2k sin(␪/2)
popoulos 关29兴 for the wavelength range where they could be com- Q ⫽ volumetric optical cross section
pared 共400–630 nm兲. Q̇ ⫽ burner heat release rate
3 Present values of the refractive index function for scattering, Rg ⫽ radius of gyration of an aggregate
F(m), were relatively independent of fuel type and agreed with tr ⫽ characteristic flame residence time
the earlier ex situ reflectometry measurements of Dalzell and Sa- xp ⫽ primary particle size parameter, ␲ d p /␭
rofim 关8兴 and Stagg and Charalampopoulos 关29兴 for wavelengths Greek Symbols
of 400–500 nm; otherwise, present values of F(m) increased
more rapidly with increasing wavelength than observed before, ␪ ⫽ angle of scattering from forward direction
although such behavior is consistent with dimensionless extinc- ␬ ⫽ imaginary part of refractive index of soot
tion coefficients being relatively independent of wavelength over ␭ ⫽ wavelength of radiation
the present test range. ␳ sa ⫽ ratio of total scattering to absorption cross sections
4 Present values of the real and imaginary parts of the refrac- ␴ D ⫽ standard deviation of D f
tive indices of soot were relatively independent of fuel type. ␴ g ⫽ standard deviation of number of particles per aggre-
Present values of real part of the refractive index of soot agreed gate from geometric mean
with the ex situ measurements of Dalzell and Sarofim 关8兴 and Subscripts
Stagg and Charalampopoulos 关29兴 within experimental uncertain-
ties; on the other hand, similar agreement for the imaginary part of a ⫽ absorption
the refractive index of soot was only observed for wavelengths of av ⫽ average value
400–550 nm while otherwise increasing with increasing wave- e ⫽ extinction
length more rapidly than the rest. One exception to this was a h ⫽ horizontal polarization
recent theoretical estimate of ␬ at 632.8 nm due to Mulholland ij ⫽ incident 共i兲 and scattered 共 j兲 polarization directions
and Mountain 关30兴 which agrees with present results within ex- s ⫽ total scattering
perimental uncertainties. v ⫽ vertical polarization
5 Present soot refractive indices did not exhibit an approach to o ⫽ initial value
a resonance condition in the near u v that is observed for graphite; Superscripts
instead, present refractive indices declined continuously with de- a ⫽ aggregate property
creasing wavelength as the near u v was approached, similar to the p ⫽ primary particle property
findings of Vaglieco et al. 关12兴 for amorphous carbon and soot. (¯) ⫽ mean value over a polydisperse aggregate population
Extending present observations of dimensionless extinction co-
efficients to other soot populations should be approached with References
caution; in particular, the present overfire soot involved large ag-
关1兴 Faeth, G. M., and Köylü, Ü. Ö., 1995, ‘‘Soot Morphology and Optical Prop-
gregates with significant effects of scattering and behavior might erties in Nonpremixed Turbulent Flame Environments,’’ Combust. Sci. Tech-
be very different for the small soot aggregates found in soot nol., 108, pp. 207–229.
growth regions. On the other hand, relatively weak effects of fuel 关2兴 Charalampopoulis, T. T., 1992, ‘‘Morphology and Dynamics of Agglomerated
Particulates in Combustion Systems Using Light Scattering Techniques,’’ 关18兴 Sivathanu, Y. R., and Faeth, G. M., 1990, ‘‘Soot Volume Fractions in the
Prog. Energy Combust. Sci., 18, pp. 13–45. Overfire Region of Turbulent Diffusion Flames,’’ Combust. Flame, 81, pp.
关3兴 Jullien, R., and Botet, R., 1987, Aggregation and Fractal Aggregates, World 133–149.
Scientific, Singapore, pp. 45–60. 关19兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., and Faeth, G. M., 1992, ‘‘Structure of Overfire Soot in Buoyant
关4兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., and Faeth, G. M., 1993, ‘‘Radiative Properties of Flame- Turbulent Diffusion Flames at Long Residence Times,’’ Combust. Flame, 89,
Generated Soot,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 111, pp. 409–417. pp. 140–156.
关5兴 Tien, C. L., and Lee, S. C., 1982, ‘‘Flame Radiation,’’ Prog. Energy Combust. 关20兴 Dobbins, R. A., Mulholland, G. W., and Bryner, N. P., 1993, ‘‘Comparison of
Sci., 8, pp. 41–59. a Fractal Smoke Optics Model With Light Extinction Measurements,’’ Atmos.
关6兴 Viskanta, R., and Mengüc, M. P., 1987, ‘‘Radiation Heat Transfer in Combus- Environ., 28, pp. 889–897.
tion Systems,’’ Prog. Energy Combust. Sci., 13, pp. 97–160. 关21兴 Choi, M. Y., Mulholland, G. W., Hamins, A., and Kashiwagi, T., 1995,
关7兴 Batten, C. E., 1985, ‘‘Spectral Optical Constants of Soots From Polarized ‘‘Comparisons of the Soot Volume Fraction Using Gravimetric and Light Ex-
Angular Reflectance Measurements,’’ Appl. Opt., 24, pp. 1193–1199. tinction Techniques,’’ Combust. Flame, 102, pp. 161–169.
关8兴 Dalzell, W. H., and Sarofim, A. F., 1969, ‘‘Optical Constants of Soot and 关22兴 Rosner, D. E., Mackowski, D. W., and Garcia-Ybarra, P., 1991, ‘‘Size- and
Their Application to Heat Flux Calculations,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 91, pp. Structure-Insensitivity of the Thermophoretic Transport of Aggregated ‘Soot’
100–104. Particles in Gases,’’ Combust. Sci. Technol., 80, pp. 87–101.
关9兴 Felske, J. D., Charalampopoulos, T. T., and Hura, H., 1984, ‘‘Determination of 关23兴 Manickavasagam, S., and Mengüc, M. P., 1993, ‘‘Effective Optical Properties
the Refractive Indices of Soot Particles from the Reflectivities of Compressed of Coal/Char Particles Determined from FT-IR Spectroscopy Experiments,’’
Soot Pellets,’’ Combust. Sci. Technol., 37, pp. 263–284. Energy Fuels, 7, pp. 860–869.
关10兴 Chang, H. Y., and Charalampopoulos, T. T., 1990, ‘‘Determination of the
关24兴 Rudder, R. R., and Bach, D. R., 1968, ‘‘Rayleigh Scattering of Ruby-Laser
Wavelength Dependence of Refractive Indices of Flame Soot,’’ Proc. R. Soc.
Light by Neutral Gases,’’ J. Opt. Soc. Am., 58, pp. 1260–1266.
London, Ser. A, 430, pp. 577–591.
关25兴 Dyer, T. M., 1979, ‘‘Rayleigh Scattering Measurements of Time-Resolved
关11兴 Lee, S. C., and Tien, C. L., 1980, ‘‘Optical Constants of Soot in Hydrocarbon
Concentration in a Turbulent Propane Jet,’’ AIAA J., 17, pp. 912–914.
Flames,’’ Eighteenth Symposium (International) on Combustion, The Combus-
关26兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., Faeth, G. M., Farias, T. L., and Carvalho, M. G., 1995, ‘‘Fractal
tion Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 1159–1166.
关12兴 Vaglieco, B. M., Beretta, F., and D’Alessio, A., 1990, ‘‘In Situ Evaluation of and Projected Structure Properties of Soot Aggregates,’’ Combust. Flame, 100,
the Soot Refractive Index in the UV-Visible from the Measurements of Scat- pp. 621–633.
tering and Extinction Coefficients in Rich Flames,’’ Combust. Flame, 79, pp. 关27兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., 1992, ‘‘Structure of Overfire Soot in Buoyant Turbulent Diffu-
259–271. sion Flames,’’ Ph. D. thesis, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
关13兴 Dobbins, R. A., and Megaridis, C. M., 1991, ‘‘Absorption and Scattering of 关28兴 Sivathanu, Y. R., Gore, J. P., Janssen, J. M., and Senser, D. W., 1993, ‘‘A
Light by Polydisperse Aggregates,’’ Appl. Opt., 30, pp. 4747–4754. Study of In Situ Specific Absorption Coefficients of Soot Paricles in Laminar
关14兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., and Faeth, G. M., 1994, ‘‘Optical Properties of Overfire Soot in Flat Flames,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 115, pp. 653–658.
Buoyant Turbulent Diffusion Flames at Long Residence Times,’’ ASME J. 关29兴 Stagg, B. J., and Charalampopoulos, T. T., 1993, ‘‘Refractive Indices of Py-
Heat Transfer, 116, pp. 152–159. rolytic Graphite, Amorphous Carbon, and Flame Soot in the Temperature
关15兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., and Faeth, G. M., 1994, ‘‘Optical Properties of Soot in Buoyant Range 25 to 600°C,’’ Combust. Flame, 94, pp. 381–396.
Laminar Diffusion Flames,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 116, pp. 971–979. 关30兴 Mulholland, G. W., and Mountain, R. D., 1999, ‘‘Coupled Dipole Calculations
关16兴 Köylü, Ü. Ö., and Faeth, G. M., 1996, ‘‘Spectral Extinction Coefficients of of Extinction Coefficient and Polarization Ratio for Smoke Agglomerates,’’
Soot Aggregates From Turbulent Diffusion Flames,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, Combust. Flame, 119, pp. 56–68.
118, pp. 415–421. 关31兴 Mulholland, G. W., and Choi, M. Y., 1998, ‘‘Measurement of the Mass Spe-
关17兴 Wu, J.-S., Krishnan, S. S., and Faeth, G. M., 1997, ‘‘Refractive Indices at cific Extinction Coefficient for Acetylene and Ethane Using the Large Ag-
Visible Wavelengths of Soot Emitted from Buoyant Turbulent Diffusion glomerate Optics Facility,’’ Twenty-Seventh Symposium (International) on
Flames,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 119, pp. 230–237. Combustion, The Combustion Insitute, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 1515–1522.
An Experimental Investigation of
the Transient Characteristics on a
Flat-Plate Heat Pipe During
Startup and Shutdown Operations
Y. Wang This work presents an experimental investigation of the thermal performance of a flat-
plate heat pipe during startup and shutdown operations. Using the analytical model
K. Vafai developed in a previously study, analytical and experimental results on the effect of input
Professor, Fellow ASME power and cooling heat transfer coefficient on the thermal performance of the heat pipe
are presented and discussed. The results indicate that the wick in the evaporator section
Department of Mechanical Engineering, provides the largest resistance to the heat transfer process followed by the wick in the
The Ohio State University, condenser section. It is found that the heat transfer coefficient has an insignificant effect
Columbus, OH 43210-1107 on the maximum temperature difference across the heat pipe where this difference refers
to the maximum difference on the outside surfaces of the flat-plate heat pipe. However, as
expected, the input heat flux has a substantial effect on the temperature rise where the
temperature rise refers to the temperature increase on the outside surface of the heat
pipe. It is found that the temperature difference across the heat pipe depends mainly on
the input power. The heat transfer coefficient strongly affects the time it takes to reach
steady state while input power has a substantially smaller effect. Empirical correlations
for the maximum temperature rise, the maximum temperature difference and the time
constants are obtained. The experimental results are compared with the analytical results
and are found to be in very good agreement. 关S0022-1481共00兲01803-X兴
Keywords: Experimental, Heat Pipes, Heat Transfer, Modeling, Transient.
1 Introduction pipes for startup and shutdown operations. The effects of input
power and heat transfer coefficient on the performance of the
The flat-plate heat pipe finds numerous applications such as in
flat-plate heat pipe were investigated.
electronics cooling and spacecraft radiator segments 共Chi 关1兴 and There is a very limited number of experimental investigations
Peterson 关2兴兲. The flat-shaped heat pipe also finds applications for available on flat-plate heat pipes. Furthermore, these few investi-
very localized heat dissipation where it is difficult to effectively gations reported system-specific applications and testing data for
utilize a conventional cylindrical heat pipe due to the limited heat the flat-plate heat pipes. In addition, the heat pipes utilized in
source and sink areas. However, the research work on heat pipes these experiments were based on a simpler structure than those
has been mainly focused on the traditional cylindrical heat pipe proposed and analyzed by Vafai et al. Among the very few ex-
for a wide variety of applications, and there is far less work con- perimental investigations in this area, the works of Kikuchi et al.
ducted on the flat-plate heat pipe. In earlier studies by Vafai and 关7兴, Basiulis et al. 关8兴, and Thomson et al. 关9兴 can be cited. Kiku-
his co-workers, both analytical and numerical investigations were chi et al. 关7兴 had carried out experiments on an electrohydrody-
conducted for the vapor and fluid flows as well as for the heat namic flat-plate heat pipe. The heat pipe was 100 cm in length and
transfer characteristics for the startup process of a flat-plate heat 10 cm in width, and employed three electrodes. The orientation of
pipe. Vafai and Wang 关3兴 investigated the overall performance of the heat pipe was horizontal in their study and Freon 11 and 113
an asymmetrical rectangular flat-plate heat pipe. They developed a were separately used as working fluids. It was found that Freon 11
pseudo-three-dimensional analytical model for steady incompress- was superior to Freon 113 from the point of view of thermal
ible vapor flow in the flat-plate heat pipe. Detailed physics of the transport. Heat transport capabilities up to 150W were recorded.
transport processes within the heat pipe were analyzed and estab- Basiulis et al. 关8兴 conducted experiments to test the performance
lished. Zhu and Vafai 关4兴 conducted a three-dimensional analyti- of flat-plate heat pipes for cooling printed wiring boards. A maxi-
cal and numerical study for the steady incompressible vapor and mum power input up to 100 W and heat fluxes up to 2 W/cm2
liquid flow in an asymmetrical flat-plate heat pipe. Their results were reported for the tested heat pipes. Thomson et al. 关9兴 per-
demonstrated that the vapor velocity profile is nonsimilar and formed experiments to investigate the application of flat-plate heat
asymmetrical and that the transverse pressure variations are small. pipes in cooling of high-power amplifiers 共HPA兲 for communica-
Later, Zhu and Vafai 关5兴 developed an analytical model to predict tion satellites. The surface temperatures of the heat pipe were
the transient thermal behavior of asymmetrical flat-plate heat measured for three different input powers. In the above studies, no
pipes during the startup process. The temperature distributions vertical wicks were reported and the condensate return path was
within the heat pipe walls and liquid-saturated wicks were ob- not specified. Additional works dealing with some restricted as-
tained analytically. Wang and Vafai 关6兴 developed an analytical pects of flat-plate heat pipes can be found in Refs. 关10–16兴. Once
model for predicting the thermal performance of flat-plate heat again, it should be noted that the heat pipes utilized in these works
were substantially simpler in form than that analyzed by Vafai
et al. 关4,6,17兴. A more recent investigation of the thermal perfor-
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, July 3, 1999; mance of a flat plate heat pipe is given in Wang and Vafai 关18兴.
revision received, Feb. 23, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Poulikakos. In this work, an experimental and analytical investigation is
conducted to characterize the thermal performance of a flat-plate
heat pipe. The effects of input heat flux and heat transfer coeffi-
cient on the thermal performance of a flat-plate heat pipe are
investigated experimentally. The temperature and heat flux distri-
butions as well as empirical correlations for the maximum tem-
perature rise, the maximum temperature difference within the heat
pipe, and time constants are presented. The experimental results
are compared with the analytical results by Wang and Vafai 关6兴.
2 Analytical Modeling
The analytical model for startup and shutdown operations de-
veloped in Wang and Vafai 关6兴 was utilized to predict the perfor-
mance of the experimental heat pipe. A summary description of
the essential parts of the analytical modeling is given below.
The main assumptions for the analysis for the flat plate heat
pipe are 共1兲 the heat transfer in the wick is by conduction, 共2兲 the
temperature in the vapor phase is uniform at any given time, 共3兲
the thermal properties of the heat pipe wall and the wick are taken
to be constant, and 共4兲 heat transfer along the top heat pipe wall
and wick in the longitudinal direction is small and is neglected.
For a startup operation, the heat transfer process in the heat pipe
is divided into five regimes. The first regime starts when power is
turned on and ends when the thermal front reaches the wall-wick
interface of the evaporator section. Following this period is the
second regime, which starts when the thermal front resumes from
the wall-wick interface and ends when the thermal front reaches Fig. 1 Schematic of the flat-plate heat pipe: „a… geometry of
the wick-vapor interface of evaporator section. In the third re- the heat pipe, „b… cross-sectional view of the heat pipe
gime, the thermal front resumes from the wick-vapor interface and
reaches the wick-wall interface of the condenser section. The
fourth regime starts when the thermal front progresses from the
designed for this experiment 共Watlow Company, Inc.兲, was at-
wick-wall interface and ends when the thermal front reaches the
tached along the centerline of the top surface of the heat pipe. The
outside wall surface of condenser section. In the fifth and final
exposed side of the heater was insulated. The heat pipe can be
regime, the outside wall surface of the condenser section begins to
divided into four sections, i.e., one evaporator section on the top
increase. For the shutdown operation, the input power is zero and
center, two smaller identical condenser sections on the top, lo-
there is only one regime. During this regime, the heat pipe tem-
cated on either side of the evaporator section, and a larger con-
peratures in all heat pipe walls and wicks decrease with time.
denser section on the bottom 共Fig. 1兲.
For each period, the temperature distributions in the heat pipe
Figure 2 is a schematic of the experimental setup. The heat pipe
walls and wicks along the normal direction are presented using
was oriented horizontally in the experiment. A Lexan frame,
second-order formulations, which are functions of time. Based on
34.93 mm in thickness, was constructed to house the heat pipe.
separate energy balance for heat pipe walls and wicks and inter-
The function of the Lexan frame was threefold: 共1兲 to support the
face energy and temperature balance at the wall-wick and wick-
heat pipe, 共2兲 to reduce the heat loss through the four edges of the
vapor interfaces, detailed analytical models are developed for
heat pipe, and 共3兲 to insure uniformity of gap thickness around the
each regime in the startup operation. For a shutdown operation,
heat pipe. Taking into account thermal expansion, the inner di-
similar procedure was utilized and a separate model is obtained.
mensions of the frame are made larger than the outside dimension
The derived models consist of close systems of equations, which
of the heat pipe, and a flexible insulation material 2 mm in thick-
can be solved numerically.
ness was installed between the Lexan frame and the heat pipe. The
In the simulation, the temperature distribution within the heat
flexible insulation material allows the heat pipe to expand at el-
pipe at the end of the startup operation is taken as the initial
evated temperatures. The flexible insulation material also reduces
temperature distribution for the shutdown operation. In this work,
the heat loss through the four edges of the heat pipe.
the steady-state conditions are assumed to have been reached if
A channel was designed to house the frame. The cross section
the relative deviation between the input and output power is less
of the channel was rectangular 共Fig. 2b兲 and its inner dimensions
than 0.2 percent. Similarly, during the shutdown operation, it is
were 217 mm in width, and 45 mm in height. The length of the
assumed that the heat pipe reaches its original temperature if the
channel was 540 mm. The frame enclosing the heat pipe was
temperature rise at the outside wall surface of the evaporator sec-
securely mounted within the chamber.
tion is less than 0.3°C 共关6兴兲.
The center part of the top wall of the channel was detachable.
3 Experimental Setup and Procedure The thermocouple wires and the power cord were fed through the
detachable top wall; therefore the thermocouple wires and the
Figure 1 is a schematic of the flat-plate heat pipe. The heat pipe power cord caused a minimal disturbance on the fluid flow
was 190.50 mm in length, 139.70 mm in width, and 34.93 mm in through the channel. In order to seal the top detachable plate,
height. The working fluid for the heat pipe was water. The heat another Lexan plate as well as a gasket were used as shown in Fig.
pipe walls were made of copper plate, 3.175 mm thick. Attached 2共b兲. To insure uniform channel height for each of the three chan-
to the inner surfaces of the heat pipe wall are porous wicks, as nels, identical spacers were constructed for each section as shown
shown in Fig. 1. In addition, vertical wicks are used to provide a in Fig. 2. This design produces three channels for the water flow
secondary return mechanism for the condensate. The vapor region as shown in Fig. 2共b兲.
is composed of four identical channels. The wicks were composed Cooling water enters the water tank through the water supply as
of sintered copper powder with a thickness of 1.651 mm. The pore shown in Fig. 2共a兲. The water pressure and flow rate were stabi-
radius of the wicks was 3.1⫻10⫺5 m and their porosity was 50 lized by the water tank. The cooling water enters the test section,
percent. The permeability of the wicks was 7⫻10⫺12 m2. A flex- which houses the heat pipe frame and the heat pipe. The flow rate
ible heater 共139.7 mm in length and 50.8 mm in width兲, specially was measured with two float flow meters with different flow rate
Fig. 2 Experimental setup: „a… experimental system, „b… cross-sectional view of the chan-
nel, „c… location of thermocouples on the heat pipe surfaces
ranges. The measured parameters include temperatures on the heat adjacent thermocouples was 12.7 mm, except for the thermo-
pipe surface, the temperature of the cooling water at inlet and couples at the end, which were separated 19.1 mm from each
outlet, the flow rate, and the input power. In each experimental other, as shown in Fig. 2共c兲.
run, the average heat transfer coefficient was maintained constant. In order to monitor the heat loss through the insulated surfaces,
Thirty E-type thermocouples were utilized to measure the top thermocouples were also installed on both the inner and outer
and bottom surface temperatures at the centerline of the heat pipe surfaces of the Lexan frame. In addition, two thermocouples were
with fifteen on each surface of the heat pipe. In order to reduce the incorporated to monitor the cooling water temperature at the inlet
disturbance, a 6-mm by 0.3-mm groove was machined in the heat and outlet, and three thermocouples were mounted on the inner
pipe walls and a high conductivity cement was used to imbed the surface of the bottom channel wall directly beneath the heat pipe.
thermocouples within the heat pipe wall. The spacing between The room temperature was also measured with two thermo-
couples. The temperature data was collected through a data acqui- Table 1 Uncertainty in heat transfer coefficient measurements
sition system. The temperatures were sampled every second. All
data were collected through the data acquisition system. h conv , 285 500 800 1000 1260
W/共m2°C兲
For a typical experimental run, the flow rate was adjusted to a ⑀ h conv ⫾5.8% ⫾7.6% ⫾10.1% ⫾11.8% ⫾13.9%
desired level. After reaching a steady flow rate, a desired heater
power was applied. The power supply was turned off when
steady-state conditions were achieved. The steady-state conditions
were assumed to have been reached when the changes of the where q w v ,e and q w v ,c are the heat fluxes at the wick vapor inter-
maximum temperature reading was less than 0.2°C within at least faces of the evaporator and condenser section, respectively. As-
90 seconds. Experiments were conducted to investigate the ther- suming a linear temperature distribution, these heat fluxes can be
mal behavior of the heat pipe during startup and shutdown pro- represented as
cesses. In addition, to analyze the cyclical operation of the heat
pipe during startup and shutdown processes, the power was turned T ww,e 共 t 兲 ⫺T v 共 t 兲
q w v ,e 共 t 兲 ⫽k w (9)
back on when initial conditions were achieved after the shutdown hw
process and the procedure described above was repeated.
T v 共 t 兲 ⫺T ww,c 共 t 兲
q w v ,c 共 t 兲 ⫽k w (10)
hw
4 Data Reduction and Uncertainty Analysis
where T v (t) is vapor temperature, and h w and k w are the thickness
The heat fluxes on the outside surface of the heat pipe were and conductivity of the wick. The conductivity of the wick can be
calculated by determined by 共关1兴兲
q e⫽
Q
Ae
(1) k w ⫽k eff⫽k l 冋 k l ⫹k s ⫺ 共 1⫺␧ 兲共 k l ⫺k s 兲
k l ⫹k s ⫹ 共 1⫺␧ 兲共 k l ⫺k s 兲
. 册 (11)
where Q is the power supply and A e the heat transfer area of the Substituting Eqs. 共8兲 and 共9兲 into 共7兲 yields
evaporator section. The heat transfer coefficient was obtained by
Q A e T wa,oe 共 t 兲 ⫹A c T wa,oc 共 t 兲
h conv⫽ (2) T ␯共 t 兲 ⫽ . (12)
A c 共 T wa,oc ⫺T ⬁ 兲 A e ⫹A c
where T wa,oc is the average temperature on the outside condenser The maximum uncertainty in temperature and power supply
surfaces at steady state and T ⬁ is the temperature of cooling wa- readings was ⫾ 0.1°C and ⫾ 3.4 percent, respectively. The un-
ter, A c is the heat transfer area of the condenser section, and certainty in the measurement of the thickness of the walls and
q c ⫽h conv共 T wa,oc 共 t 兲 ⫺T ⬁ 共 t 兲兲 (3) wicks was ⫾ 0.001 mm while the uncertainty in the measurement
of the length, width, and height was about ⫾ 0.01 mm. Using the
where q c is the heat flux over the entire condenser section. The method of Kline and McClintock 关19兴, the uncertainties in the
temperature at the heat pipe wall-wick interface of the evaporator heat transfer coefficient measurement were determined and are
section can be found from displayed in Table 1. The overall energy balance was also
q e h wa checked and was found to be satisfied well within less than four
T ww,e 共 t 兲 ⫽T wa,oe 共 t 兲 ⫺ (4) percent.
k wa
where T ww,e (t) is the temperature at the wall-wick interface, 5 Results and Discussion
T wa,oe (t) is the outside wall temperature of the evaporator section Figure 3 shows the temporal temperature rise for the outside
and h wa and k wa are the thickness and conductivity of the heat surface of the heat pipe for different input heat fluxes. As ex-
pipe wall. The temperature at the heat pipe wall-wick interface of pected, the maximum top wall surface temperature increases with
the condenser section is similarly obtained from an increase in input heat flux. However, an increase in the input
q c 共 t 兲 h wa heat flux has less of an effect on the bottom surface temperature of
T ww,c 共 t 兲 ⫽T wa,oc 共 t 兲 ⫹ . (5) the heat pipe since the heat flux at the condenser section is smaller
k wa than that of the evaporator section. The time that it takes for the
It should be noted that Eqs. 共4兲 and 共5兲 provide a linear extrapo- startup operation to reach steady state is almost the same for these
lation of instantaneous experimental data based on the measured four cases, which indicates that input power has an insignificant
surface temperatures. As such they approximate the thermal stor- effect on the startup time over the range considered in this work.
age, which is implicitly built in the measured surface temperature The input heat flux-time histories are plotted in Fig. 4 for the four
values. It should be noted that the storage terms for all different cases shown in Fig. 3. As expected, the heat flux in the condenser
layers of the flat-plate heat pipe are fully accounted for in the section increases with an increase in the input heat flux.
analytical solution. Since the thermal conductivity of the solid Figure 5 shows the transient temperature rise on the outside
wall is relatively high, the following approximation is invoked at wall surface of the heat pipe for different heat transfer coeffi-
the heat pipe wall-wick interface in the evaporator section for cients. As shown in Fig. 5, increasing the heat transfer coefficient
extrapolating the data reduces the wall surface temperatures on both the evaporator and
condenser sections. As can be seen in Fig. 5, increasing the heat
T wa,oe 共 t 兲 ⬵T ww,e 共 t 兲 . (6) transfer coefficient reduces the time it takes to reach steady state.
Similarly, the following approximation is made at the heat pipe The heat flux-time histories for various heat transfer coefficients
wall-wick interface in the condenser section for extrapolating are plotted in Fig. 6. As can been seen in Fig. 6, for a fixed input
data: power increasing the heat transfer coefficient reduces the time it
takes to reach steady-state conditions. For all these figures, the
T wa,oc 共 t 兲 ⬵T ww,c 共 t 兲 . (7) maximum deviation for the relative temperature errors between
An energy balance between the evaporator section and the con- analytical and experimental results is from 2.4 percent to 7.9
denser section yields percent.
Figures 3 to 6 show excellent agreement between the measured
q w v ,e 共 t 兲 A e ⫽q w v ,c 共 t 兲 A c (8) and the analytical heat flux and temporal temperature distribu-
Fig. 3 Temporal temperature rise for the outside surfaces of the heat pipe for different
input heat fluxes
tions. As can be seen in Figs. 3 and 5, the measured temperature Figures 7 and 8 show the outside surface temperature distribu-
distributions are a little lower than the analytical temperature dis- tions in the z direction for two typical cases. Strictly speaking, the
tributions under steady-state conditions. This can be attributed to heat transfer along the top wall is two-dimensional, normal as
the secondary heat conduction path, i.e., the longitudinal conduc- well as along the wall. The heat is predominantly transferred in
tion across the top heat pipe wall, which was not considered in the the normal direction from the evaporator section to the condenser
analytical model. section through the evaporation of working fluid and condensation
Fig. 4 Heat flux variations for different power inputs
Fig. 5 Temporal temperature rise for the outside wall of the heat pipe for various heat
transfer coefficients
of the vapor. The top wall also provides a secondary conduction enhance the heat pipe performance by reducing its maximum tem-
path for the heat flow in the longitudinal direction. However, this perature rise and the maximum temperature difference within the
is a relatively minor pathway as evidenced from the good agree- heat pipe.
ment between earlier cited model by Wang and Vafai 关6兴 and the The transient temperature distributions in the normal direction
experimental results. Heat transfer through the secondary path can are plotted in Figs. 9 and 10 for two different input heat fluxes. As
Fig. 6 Effect of heat transfer coefficient variations on the heat flux distribution
Fig. 7 Temperature distribution along the z -direction at different times: q e Ä5580 WÕm2,
h convÄ285 WÕ„m2°C…
can be seen in Figs. 9 and 10, the wick in the evaporator section compared to the startup operation.
contributes the largest resistance to the total heat transfer. The Figure 11 shows that a decrease in the heat transfer coefficient
wick in the condenser section also offers a significant resistance to or an increase in input heat flux results in an increase in the
the total heat transfer resistance. After the power is turned off, the maximum temperature rise. However, the maximum temperature
heat pipe tends to have a more uniform temperature distribution as difference within the heat pipe is not sensitive to the changes in
Fig. 8 Temperature distribution along the z -direction at different times: qe

Ä15500 WÕm2, h convÄ1230 WÕ„m2°C…
Fig. 9 Transient temperature distribution along the normal direction: q e Ä5580 WÕm2,
the heat transfer coefficient. The maximum temperature rise refers the analytical results is quite small. However, the deviation in-
to the largest temperature increase on the outside surface of the creases with an increase in the input power. This maybe attributed
heat pipe. As can be seen in Fig. 11, variations in the heat transfer to larger contributions of the secondary conduction path for higher
coefficient have less of an effect beyond h conv⬎1000 W/m2. It can input heat fluxes.
be seen in Fig. 11 that the deviation between the experimental and Variations of maximum temperature rise in terms of the heat
Fig. 10 Transient temperature distribution along the normal direction: q e Ä15500 WÕm2,
Fig. 11 Effect of variations in heat transfer coefficient and input power on the maxi-
mum temperature rise
transfer coefficient and input heat flux can be represented as takes for the temperature rise to reach 63.2 percent of its maxi-
shown in Fig. 12. This leads to an empirical correlation given mum value for a startup operation, and likewise as the time it
below: takes for the temperature rise to drop 63.2 percent for a shutdown
冉冊
operation. As can be seen, there is a very good agreement between
1.57
␪ max⫽ 9.66⫹ q ⫻10⫺4 (13) the analytical and experimental results. Based on the results given
h conv e in Fig. 14, the following empirical correlations for the heat pipe
where time constants for the startup and shutdown operations are
obtained:
5580 W/m2⭐q e ⭐15,500 W/m2
t c,u p ⫽35.2⫺0.0341h conv1.50⫻10⫺5 h 2conv,
285 W/共m °C兲⭐h conv⭐1260 W/共m °C兲.
2 2
285 W/共m2°C兲⬍h conv⬍1260 W/共m2°C兲 (15)
In the above equations, q e is the input heat flux in W/m2 and h conv
is the heat transfer coefficient in W/共m2°C兲. The empirical corre- t c,down⫽31.7⫺0.0321h conv⫹1.44⫻10⫺5 h 2conv,
lation predicts the data with an average error of 1.6 percent. As
expected, as in many empirical relationships, Eq. 共13兲 includes 285 W/共m2°C兲⬍h conv⬍1260 W/共m2SDC兲 (16)
system dependent parameters within it. Due to various parameters
that are involved in the flat plate heat pipe, more general relation-
ships can be obtained through the use of analytical results pre-
sented in Wang and Vafai 关6兴 which have been shown in the
present work to be in very good agreement with the experimental
results.
Figure 13 displays the maximum temperature difference within
the heat pipe as a function of the input heat flux, where this
difference refers to the maximum temperature difference on the
outside surfaces of the flat plate heat pipe. As shown in Fig. 13,
the heat transfer coefficient has an insignificant effect on the
maximum temperature difference. The heat input is the main fac-
tor, which determines the maximum temperature difference. Fig-
ure 13 indicates that the analytical maximum temperature differ-
ence is slightly larger than the measured one, which could be
attributed to the secondary heat transfer path as discussed previ-
ously. Based on Fig. 13, the following correlation can be
obtained:
⌬T max⫽⫺0.301⫹q e ⫻10⫺3 , 5580 W/m2⬍q e ⬍15,500 W/m2
(14)
where, q e is the input heat flux in W/m2.
Figure 14 shows the time constants for both analytical and ex- Fig. 12 Compact representation of the maximum temperature
perimental results. These time constants are defined as the time it rise in terms of the heat transfer coefficient and input heat flux
Fig. 13 Effect of input heat flux on the maximum temperature Fig. 16 Temporal temperature distribution for a cyclical opera-
difference tion: q e Ä14,000 WÕm2, h convÄ1210 WÕ„m2°C…
where h conv is the heat transfer coefficient in W/共m2°C兲. Equation

共15兲 predicts the experimental results with an average deviation of
8.4 percent for the startup operation, while Eq. 共16兲 predicts the
experimental results with an average deviation of 14.7 percent for
the shutdown operation. It should be noted that the four vertical
wicks and four edges also affect the time constants.
Figures 15 and 16 show the temporal temperature distributions
on the outside surfaces of the heat pipe for a cyclical operation.
For the second and the consequent operation cycles, the initial
temperature was taken as zero in the analysis, while that was not
the case on the experimental side. As shown in Figs. 15 and 16,
the initial temperature for the consequent startup operation does
not affect the overall performance significantly. Therefore, Eqs.
共13兲–共16兲 can be utilized for the startup and shutdown processes
during any of the operational cycles.
6 Conclusions
Fig. 14 Time constants for different input heat fluxes for star- This work presents an analytical and experimental investigation
tup and shutdown operations
of the thermal performance of a flat-plate heat pipe during startup
and shutdown operations. The effects of input power and the heat
transfer coefficient on the thermal performance of the heat pipe
are investigated. The results show that the wick in the evaporator
section provides the largest part of the total thermal resistance,
and the wick in the condenser section also contributes a significant
part of the total resistance. It is found that the maximum tempera-
ture rise increases linearly with input heat flux. For smaller values
of the convective heat transfer coefficient 共below 500W/共m2°C兲兲,
increasing h conv results in a decrease in the maximum temperature
rise, while for larger heat transfer coefficients 共above
700W/共m2°C兲兲, increasing h conv would have a relatively insignifi-
cant effect on the maximum temperature rise.
It was also found that the maximum temperature difference
within the heat pipe mainly depends on the input power while
variations in the heat transfer coefficient did not have a significant
effect. The heat transfer coefficient strongly affects the time it
takes to reach steady state while input power has only a slight
effect. Empirical correlations for the maximum temperature rise
as a function of input heat flux and heat transfer coefficient, and
the maximum temperature difference as a function of input heat
flux were determined. Correlations were also given for the time
constants in terms of heat transfer coefficients. The experimental
results for the maximum outside surface temperature rise, maxi-
mum temperature difference, heat flux, and time constants were
Fig. 15 Temporal temperature distribution for a cyclical opera- compared with the analytical results and were found to be in very
tion: q e Ä8830 WÕm2, h convÄ1260 WÕ„m2°C… good agreement.
Acknowledgment 关2兴 Peterson, G. P., 1990, ‘‘Thermal Control of Electronic Equipment and De-
vices,’’ Advances in Heat Transfer, Vol. 20, Hartnett, J. P., and Irvine, T. F.,
The grant 共DE-F602-93ER61612兲 by the Department of Energy Jr., eds., Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 181–314.
is acknowledged and greatly appreciated. 关3兴 Vafai, K., and Wang, W., 1992, ‘‘Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer Char-
acteristics of an Asymmetrical Flat Plate Heat Pipe,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf.,
Nomenclature 35, pp. 2087–2099.
关4兴 Zhu, N., and Vafai, K., 1998, ‘‘Vapor and Liquid Flow in an Asymmetrical
A ⫽ heat input area, m2 Flat Plate Heat Pipe: A Three-Dimensional Analytical and Numerical Investi-
h ⫽ thickness, m gation,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 41, pp. 159–174.
h conv ⫽ heat transfer coefficient, W/共m2°C兲关5兴 Zhu, N., and Vafai, K., 1998, ‘‘Analytical Modeling of the Startup Character-
istics of Asymmetrical Flat Plate and Disk-Shaped Heat Pipes,’’ Int. J. Heat
H ⫽ height of the heat pipe, m
Mass Transf., 41, No. 17, pp. 2619–2637.
k ⫽ thermal conductivity, W/共m°C兲关6兴 Wang, Y., and Vafai, K., 1999, ‘‘Transient Characterization of Flat Plate Heat
q ⫽ heat flux, W/m2 Pipes During Startup and Shutdown Processes,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 43,
Q ⫽ power input rate, W No. 15, pp. 2641–2655.
t ⫽ time, seconds 关7兴 Reay, D. A., ed., Proc. IV Int. Heat Pipe Conference, Pergamon Press, Oxford,
t c ⫽ time constant, seconds UK.
T ⫽ temperature, °C 关8兴 Basiulis, A., Tanzer, H., and McCabe, S., 1986, ‘‘Thermal Management of
High Power PWB’S Through the Use of Heat Pipe Substrates,’’ Proc. 6th
y ⫽ normal coordinate Annual International Electronic Packaging Conference, Int. Electron. Packag-
z ⫽ normal coordinate ing Soc., pp. 501–515.
⌬T ⫽ temperature difference, °C 关9兴 Thomson, M., Ruel, C., and Donato, M., 1989, ‘‘Characterization of a Flat
␧ ⫽ porosity Plate Heat Pipe for Electronic Cooling in a Space Environment,’’ Heat Trans-
␧ h conv ⫽ uncertainty in heat transfer coefficient fer in Electronics, ASME, New York, pp. 59–65.
关10兴 Bong, T. Y., Ng, K. C., and Bao, H., 1993, ‘‘Thermal Performance of a
␪ ⫽ temperature rise, °C Flat-Plate Heat-Pipe Collector Array,’’ Sol. Energy, 50, pp. 491–498.
Subscript 关11兴 Chen, K. S., Tsai, S. T., and Yang, Y. W., 1994, ‘‘Heat Performance of a
Double-Loop Separate-Type Hat Pipe: Measurement Results,’’ Energy Con-
c ⫽ condenser vers. Manage., 35, pp. 1131–1141.
down ⫽ shutdown operation 关12兴 Khrustalev, D., and Faghri, A., 1995, ‘‘Thermal Characteristics of Conven-
e ⫽ evaporator tional and Flat Miniature Axially Grooved Heat Pipes,’’ ASME J. Heat Trans-
eff ⫽ effective fer, 117, pp. 1038–1054.
l ⫽ liquid 关13兴 Huang, X. Y., and Liu, C. Y., 1996, ‘‘The Pressure and Velocity Fields in the
Wick Structure of a Localized Heated Flat Plate Heat Pipe,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
max ⫽ maximum Transf., 39, pp. 1325–1330.
oc ⫽ outside surface of condenser section 关14兴 Khrustalev, D., and Faghri, A., 1996, ‘‘Estimation of the Maximum Heat Flux
oe ⫽ outside surface of evaporator section in the Inverted Meniscus Type Evaporator of a Flat Miniature Heat Pipe,’’ Int.
s ⫽ solid J. Heat Mass Transf., 39, pp. 1899–1909.
up ⫽ startup operation 关15兴 Wei, J., Hijikara, K., Takayoshi, I., 1997, ‘‘Fin Efficiency Enhancements Us-
v ⫽ vapor ing a Gravity-Assisted Heat Pipe,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 1045–
1051.
w ⫽ wick 关16兴 Faghri, A., 1995, Heat Pipe Science and Technology, Taylor and Francis,
wa ⫽ wall Bristol, PA.
wv ⫽ wick and vapor interface 关17兴 Vafai, K., Zhu, N., and Wang, W., 1995, ‘‘Analysis of Asymmetrical Disk-
ww ⫽ wall and wick interface Shaped and Flat Plate Heat Pipes,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp. 209–
⬁ ⫽ environment 218.
关18兴 Wang, Y., and Vafai, K., 2000, ‘‘An Experimental Investigation of the Ther-
mal Performance of an Asymmetrical Flat Plate Heat Pipe,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
References Transf., 43, No. 15, pp. 2657–2668.
关1兴 Chi, S. W., 1976, Heat Pipe Theory and Practice, Hemisphere, Washington, 关19兴 Kline, S. J., and McClintock, F. A., 1953, ‘‘Describing Uncertainties in Single
DC. Sample Experiment,’’ Mech. Eng. 共Am. Soc. Mech. Eng.兲, 75, No. 1, pp. 3–8.
J. R. Lukes
Graduate Student Researcher,
e-mail: jennifer@newton.me.berkeley.edu Molecular Dynamics Study of
D. Y. Li
Graduate Student Researcher, Solid Thin-Film Thermal
e-mail: deyuli@newton.me.berkeley.edu

Conductivity
University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740 This study uses the molecular dynamics computational technique to investigate the ther-
mal conductivity of solid thin films in the direction perpendicular to the film plane. In
order to establish a benchmark reference, the computations are based on the widely used
X.-G. Liang Lennard-Jones argon model due to its agreement with experimental liquid-phase data, its
Professor, physically meaningful parameters, and its simple two-body form. Thermal conductivity
Department of Engineering Mechanics, increases with film thickness, as expected from thin-film experimental data and theoretical
Tsinghua University, predictions. The calculated values are roughly 30 percent higher than anticipated. Vary-
Beijing 100084, China ing the boundary conditions, heat flux, and lateral dimensions of the films causes no
e-mail: liangxg@tsinghua.edu.cn observable change in the thermal conductivity values. The present study also delineates
the conditions necessary for meaningful thermal conductivity calculations and offers rec-
ommendations for efficient simulations. This work shows that molecular dynamics, ap-
C.-L. Tien plied under the correct conditions, is a viable tool for calculating the thermal conductivity
Hon. Mem. ASME of solid thin films. More generally, it demonstrates the potential of molecular dynamics
University Professor and NEC Distinguished for ascertaining microscale thermophysical properties in complex structures.
Professor of Engineering, 关S0022-1481共00兲02303-3兴
University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740 Keywords: Conduction, Heat Transfer, Molecular Dynamics, Nanoscale, Thin Films
e-mail: nancie@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Introduction Despite the technological importance of solid thin films in ther-

mally sensitive applications, no molecular dynamics calculation of
Novel materials such as buckyballs and buckytubes, highly po-
the thermal conductivity of solid thin films as a function of thick-
rous and ultrathin films, and quantum wires and dots are forming ness has been reported before. Related studies, however, have
the building blocks of an exciting new world of submicron de- been made. Mountain and MacDonald 共关3兴兲 calculated the tem-
vices. For instance, solid thin films with characteristic dimensions perature dependence of thermal conductivity for two and three-
from tens to hundreds of nanometers are key components in dimensional 1000-particle solid films. Kaburaki and Machida 关4兴
integrated-circuit transistors and quantum-well lasers. Device per- found that increasing the number of particles in a one-dimensional
formance in these applications is very sensitive to operating tem- chain increases thermal conductivity. Kotake and Wakuri 关5兴
perature. Overheating in semiconductor lasers, for example, is a showed for a two-dimensional solid system subjected to a con-
major obstacle to increased output power and integration 共关1兴兲. stant flux that the resultant temperature gradients sharply increase
For the best design of micro and nanodevices and thin-film mate- as the system width is decreased. Recent work by Volz and Chen
rials, knowledge of thermophysical properties such as thermal 关6兴 indicates that solid nanowires exhibit a strong reduction in
conductivity is of paramount importance. thermal conductivity as compared to the bulk.
It is well known from measurements on thin films that such
materials display markedly lower thermal conductivities than their
bulk counterparts. Several approaches exist to predict the thin-film
thermal conductivity for materials where heat conduction by Model of Argon-Type Solid Thin Films
quantized lattice vibrations, or phonons, is dominant. These ap- Using the molecular dynamics technique in a three-dimensional
proaches include kinetic theory, the Boltzmann transport equation, computational domain, the current paper calculates thermal con-
and the Monte Carlo computational technique. Such methods, ductivity in a solid argon-type model system as the thickness in
however, can have difficulty handling the nonuniformly distrib- one dimension is varied. Although argon is not a real thin-film
uted impurities, voids, cracks, dislocations, and complex geom- material, it is the best choice for an initial thin-film thermal con-
etries present in real films. Numerous studies, for example, that of ductivity molecular dynamics study. One important reason for this
Inoue et al. 关2兴 show that the molecular dynamics technique is is the availability of a good intermolecular potential for argon.
well suited for the study of nanoscale phenomena in solid-phase The widely accepted Lennard-Jones 12-6 共LJ兲 potential matches
materials. Molecular dynamics is a computational method that experimental data for bulk fluid argon reasonably well, employs
simulates the real behavior of materials and calculates physical meaningful physical constants as parameters, and possesses a
properties of these materials by simultaneously solving the equa- simple, two-body form which requires much less computation
tions of motion for a system of atoms interacting with a given time than more complex potentials involving three-body and
potential. This method provides a needed supplement to experi- higher terms 共关7兴兲. A rigorous quantum-mechanical approach is at
mental measurements, which can be extremely difficult at such present not feasible for systems of more than a few atoms because
length scales. such a method is too numerically intensive. The efforts of many
workers, for example, Car 关8兴, are currently directed toward this
problem.
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Feb. 28, 1999; Additional reasons for using the LJ potential to study solid thin
revision received, Mar. 1, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Poulikakos. films are that the results can be benchmarked against the large
body of existing work on argon-type systems and that the argon
model, as noted by Kristensen et al. 关9兴, should reveal fundamen-
tal phenomena not only for argon but for a wide variety of mate-
rials. Also, the argon model, unlike models of more technologi-
cally relevant materials, should span from the microscale regime
to the bulk regime in a reasonable computational domain size due
to its short phonon mean free path.
After establishing a firm foundation for pure thin films, the
argon model can then be extended to thin-film systems with im-
purities, pores, defects, and other types of complicated structures.
To get the most quantitatively accurate results for a given mate-
rial, a potential specific to that material should be used, but to
predict qualitative trends, which is the aim of this paper, the argon
model is a sensible choice.
Computational Procedure
Several molecular dynamics approaches can be used to calcu-
late thermal conductivity 关10兴. The nonhomogeneous nonequilib-
rium approach was chosen for the present work because it pro-
vides a direct physical representation of heat flow in a thin film. A
new nonhomogeneous nonequilibrium program, based on the
equilibrium classical molecular dynamics subroutines of Allen
and Tildesley 关7兴, was written and used for all simulations.
The general approach of the program is to apply a constant heat
flux to an argon-type solid system, calculate the resulting tempera-
ture gradient, and determine the thermal conductivity by a simple
ratio of flux to temperature gradient. The reverse method, in Fig. 1 Simulation cell schematic drawings: „a… bulk thermal
which the system boundaries are kept at constant temperatures conductivity, „b… perpendicular thermal conductivity
and the resultant flux is calculated, was initially tried. This was
abandoned in favor of the current scheme due to the slow conver-
gence of the heat flux value. The execution of the program pro-
再冉冊冉冊冎
ceeds as follows. First, the simulation cell is constructed of face-
centered cubic unit cells. Each unit cell contains four atoms and ␴ LJ 12
␴ LJ 6
corresponds to two atomic planes of atoms. Each atom is assigned ␾ LJ共 r i j 兲 ⫽4␧ LJ ⫺ . (1)
rij rij
a type according to its spatial position: ‘‘hot,’’ ‘‘cold,’’ ‘‘regu-
lar,’’ or ‘‘fixed.’’ The configuration of the simulation cell depends Only the neighbors of an atom within a certain cutoff radius,
upon whether bulk 共Fig. 1共a兲兲 or perpendicular 共Fig. 1共b兲兲 conduc- 2.6␴ LJ , are included in the force calculations because faraway
tivity is to be calculated. Bulk materials are simulated by using atoms have a negligible contribution to the total force on a given
periodic boundary conditions, in which the actual simulation cell atom. This molecular dynamics convention keeps computation
of a small number of atoms is essentially repeated infinitely in all time manageable.
three coordinate directions. A drawback of this method is that it After equilibration, a heat flux is imposed on the system by
suppresses phonons in solids with wavelengths larger than the adding a fixed amount of energy to hot atoms and removing the
simulation cell size 共关7兴兲. same amount of energy from cold atoms at every time step. This
For thin films, periodic boundary conditions are used in two induces heat flow in the x-direction from the hot region to the cold
coordinate directions. Fixed atoms, which remain at their lattice region across the regular atoms. The algorithm of Ikeshoji and
positions for the entire simulation, are usually used in the third, Hafskjold 关12兴, which is used to apply the flux, alters kinetic
‘‘thin’’ direction to enforce an adiabatic boundary condition. In energy in the hot region by scaling each hot atom’s velocity by the
some simulations, a free boundary condition was used in the thin same factor R and by subtracting the same small velocity v sub
direction. For these cases, the flux and initial temperature values from this scaled velocity. The values of R and v sub , which change
had to be lowered to prevent evaporation of the surface atoms, and at each time step, are chosen to conserve momentum and to add
much longer simulations had to be run to reach steady state. Fol- the desired amount of energy. A similar procedure is followed for
lowing the example of Kotake and Wakuri 关5兴, four planes of the cold atoms, except kinetic energy is subtracted rather than
fixed atoms are deemed sufficient to simulate an infinite wall due added.
to the short range of the interatomic forces. All nonfixed atoms are Instantaneous temperatures in each atomic x-plane are calcu-
given an initial temperature by choosing their velocities according lated using the formula
to the Maxwell distribution at that temperature. After this, the
Nl
program advances the difference equations of motion for a short
equilibration period to allow a realistic thermodynamic state to be
established.
T l ⫽m 兺v
i⫽1
2
i / 3N l k B (2)
The difference equations come from the widely used ‘‘velocity

Verlet’’ algorithm 共关11兴兲. In this algorithm, new atomic positions where the squares of the magnitudes of the atomic velocities in a
are calculated based on old positions, velocities, and forces. Ve- particular plane are summed in accordance with the equipartition
locities are calculated using a two-step scheme, in which old principle. The time-averaged temperature, standard deviation of
forces are used to advance old velocities to ‘‘half-step’’ velocities, temperature, and standard error of temperature are then calculated
new forces are calculated from the LJ potential using the new for each plane. The standard error of the planar temperature 关13,7兴
positions, and new velocities are found using the half-step veloci-
ties and new forces. The LJ potential is ␴ 具 T l 典 ⫽ ␴ T l 冑2 ␶ corr / ␶ run (3)
where the mean free path 共MFP兲 in argon at the given planar
temperature 共关14,15兴兲 and highest tabulated speed of sound for
fluid argon from the CRC Handbook 关16兴 are used. The fluid
argon value was used because solid argon values were not avail-
able. The assumption of Eq. 共4兲 is supported by the work of Volz
et al. 关17兴, who found good agreement between the autocorrela-
tion time and the kinetic theory mean free time for molecular
dynamics simulations on solid argon.
Figure 2 shows a pair of example temperature profiles; the mag-
nitude of the standard error is indicated by the error bars. In this
figure, the five regular atom x-planes in the center display a linear
profile and the source 共hot兲 and sink 共cold兲 atoms on either side
show the expected parabolic curvature. The slope of the best line
fitted to the temperature profile of the regular atoms
Fig. 2 Temperature in each x -plane of a five regular plane

simulation for fixed and free boundaries 冉兺冊冉兺冊冉兺冊冉兺冊
p
l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典
2
1
p
l 具 T l典
l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典
2 ⫺
p
l
l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典
2
p
l⫽1
具 T l典
␴ 具2T l 典
冉兺冊冉兺冊冉兺冊
l l l
b⫽ p p p 2 (5)
1 l2 l
⫺
l⫽1 ␴ 具2T l 典 l⫽1 ␴ 具2T l 典 l⫽1 ␴ 具2T l 典
depends on the simulation run time at steady state and on the
characteristic time over which the instantaneous planar tempera-
tures are self-correlated. For simplicity, it is assumed that
␶ corr⯝MFP/ v s , (4) and the probable error of this slope
冑冉兺冊冒冋冉兺冊冉兺冊冉兺冊册
p p p p 2
1 1 l2 l
␴ b⫽ ⫺ (6)
l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典 l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典 l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典 l⫽1 ␴ 具 T 典
2 2 2 2
l l l l
are found using a weighted least-squares method 共关18兴兲. Results and Discussion
Finally, thermal conductivity is found from
General Comments About Simulation. The simulations
k⫽⫺aq eff / 2b (7) were run on DEC 3000 workstations, an AlphaServer 2000, and a
Dell Optiplex GX1p PC running the Linux operating system. The
where the factor a/2 accounts for the fact that the plane spacing is numerical differences in results across the different platforms
one-half the lattice parameter. Note that q eff is not exactly the were negligible. Computation time varied from a few hours to
same as the ideal imposed heat flux due to small nonzero fluxes several days, depending on the sizes of the systems considered.
that occur in the y and z-directions. The actual heat flux through The total simulated time varied from tens of picoseconds to nano-
each regular plane is calculated from particle positions and veloci- seconds and was chosen to be proportional to the characteristic
ties at regular intervals throughout the simulation using the equa- thermal diffusion time estimated for each system. Two types of
tions of Irving and Kirkwood 关19兴, and the time averages of these thermal conductivity simulations were run: bulk and perpendicu-
planar calculated fluxes are then spatially averaged over the regular. Critical input parameters for the simulations are listed in
lar planes Table 1; other input parameters and detailed results for each simu-
lation are listed elsewhere 关20兴. Standard LJ nondimensionaliza-
q eff⫽ 冉兺
p
具 q l典
l⫽1 ␴ 具 q 典
2
l
冊冒冉兺 p
l⫽1 ␴ 具 q 典
2
l
1
冊 (8)
tions for temperature and thermal conductivity are used in the
simulations:
to yield effective flux. The standard error of planar flux is calcu- Table 1 Simulation parameters
lated as above for temperature in Eq. 共3兲, and its squared recipro-
cal is used as the weighting factor in Eq. 共8兲. For each simulation, Parameter Value
the expression for error propagation in Press et al. 关18兴 is used to
calculate the probable error of effective flux LJ well depth parameter 1.67⫻10⫺21 J
LJ equilibrium separation parameter 3.4 Å
冑兺冉冊
p
Argon atomic mass 66.3⫻10⫺27 kg
⳵ q eff 2 Boltzmann’s constant 1.38⫻10⫺23 J/K
␴ q eff⫽ ␴ 具2q l 典 (9) Lattice constant 5.31 Å
l⫽1 ⳵ 具 q l典 Time step 1 fs
Imposed dimensionless heat flux* 1.0
and is also used to find the probable error of thermal conductivity Cross-sectional unit cells* 4
Unit cells in each hot or cold region* 2
冑冉冊冉冊
Unit cells in each fixed region 2
⳵k 2 ⳵k 2
␴ k⫽ ␴ q2 eff ⫹ ␴ 2b . (10)
⳵ q eff ⳵b *Parameters for specific simulations have been varied as noted in text.
␴ LJ
冑
2
k BT m
T *⫽ k * ⫽k . (11)
␧ LJ kB ␧ LJ
Since all parameters are dimensionless, the superscript will hence-
forth be dropped.
Two important criteria for the simulations are that q eff is nearly
the same as the imposed flux, and that the temperature profiles are
reasonably close to linear. The profiles should not be expected to
be completely linear, since thermal conductivity displays some
temperature dependence. If the two criteria above are not satisfied,
the thermal conductivity calculation, which is based on the Fou-
rier law, is not valid. It was found that the typical reason that the
criteria are not met is a too-short simulation time, although in very
preliminary simulations lack of energy conservation due to a too-
large time step and explosion of the lattice due to a too-small
initial lattice spacing also occurred. It was observed that simula-
tions not run long enough to attain a steady state yielded values of
q eff lower than the imposed fluxes and showed distinctly nonlinear
temperature profiles. This is reasonable, since a finite time is re-
quired for the film to reach steady state after imposition of the Fig. 3 Velocity distributions at T Ä0.5 for various cross sec-
heat flux at the boundaries. The flux discrepancies disappeared tions and sampled time steps: „a… 4Ã4, 10,000; „b… 6Ã6, 10,000;
and the temperature profiles became more linear as the number of „c… 4Ã4, 30,000; „d… 6Ã6, 30,000
time steps in the simulation increased. Due to the difficulty in
choosing a simulation time long enough to satisfy the criteria yet
short enough to avoid undue computational burden, a trial-and-
error process had to be followed to find values for ␶ run . Values Use of Eq. 共2兲 to calculate planar temperature throughout the
roughly 20 times the characteristic diffusion time were found suf- simulation assumes that a local thermodynamic equilibrium is es-
ficient to satisfy the criteria. For the thermal conductivity simula- tablished in each atomic plane. Tenenbaum et al. 关21兴 and Haf-
tions reported here, the q eff values were all within four percent of skjold and Ratkje 关22兴 assert that local thermodynamic equilib-
the ideal imposed flux and the temperature profiles were reason- rium is established in molecular dynamics simulations of
ably linear. nonequilibrium fluids provided that the control volume thickness
Momentum conservation, as expected, was found to hold ex- is roughly equal to the mean interatomic distance. If true for flu-
actly for the present 96 and 252-atom bulk simulations. In bulk ids, it is even more likely to be true for atomic planes in solids
simulations with more atoms, and in all thin-film simulations, because the increased density causes increased interatomic inter-
however, the algorithm of Ikeshoji and Hafskjold 关12兴 did not action that aids interplanar energy transport. To test whether local
strictly conserve instantaneous total system momentum. Instead, thermodynamic equilibrium was established in the present case,
the instantaneous momentum fluctuated rapidly about zero, the the velocity of a single central atom in each regular, hot, and cold
time-averaged system momentum value. The reason for this is not plane was monitored for the last 10,000 and 30,000 fs of a T
known, but is thought to be the result of small accumulated nu- ⫽0.5 simulation of a thin film with seven regular planes. Two
merical errors due to roundoff and truncation of the potential at different values of cross section, or number of y unit cells by the
the cutoff radius. The standard deviation of the momentum fluc- unit of z unit cells, were used: 4⫻4 共32 atoms/plane兲 and 6⫻6
tuations for the bulk and free-boundary thin-film simulations was 共72 atoms/plane兲. Figure 3 shows a histogram of the x(o), y
several orders of magnitude smaller than that for fixed-boundary (⫹), and z( * ) velocity components of the central atom for a rep-
thin-film simulations, indicating that there may be some wall ef- resentative regular plane along with the Maxwell distribution at
fect that works against momentum conservation. Considering that the time-averaged planar temperature. The figure clearly shows
the wall atoms influence the motion of the regular, hot, and cold that while there are some discrepancies between the Maxwell dis-
atoms without themselves being affected, in a manner analogous tribution and the calculated velocity distribution for the 10,000
to a wall of infinite mass imparting impulses to impinging billiard cases, the 30,000 cases show much better agreement for both 4
balls, it is reasonable that momentum is not strictly conserved. ⫻4 and 6⫻6 cross sections. Since ␶ run for all simulations is
Despite the lack of exact momentum conservation, no significant longer than 30,000 fs, it is reasonable to assume that the real
difference was found between the thermal conductivities for fixed calculated velocity distribution is even closer to a perfect Max-
and free-boundary simulations for both a 3 and a 5-regular plane wellian. Increasing the cross section from 4⫻4 to 6⫻6 causes a
case at a mean lattice temperature T⫽0.27 共Table 2兲. Thus, the much less dramatic improvement of the velocity distribution for
observed small deviations from zero total momentum are not im- both 10,000 and 30,000 at this temperature. This result suggests
portant for the purposes of this paper. that longer simulations may be more effective than increased
cross sections in attaining local thermodynamic equilibrium. The
Maxwellian nature of the velocity distributions and the linear tem-
perature profiles in the calculations indicate that the local thermo-
Table 2 Effect of boundary conditions on thermal conductivity dynamic equilibrium assumption is justified.
Thermal Bulk Thermal Conductivity. Bulk thermal conductivity was
Configuration Conductivity Error calculated for simulation cells of various sizes at dimensionless
Free boundary 0.391 0.075 mean lattice temperatures of 0.3 and 0.5 to check the agreement of
three regular planes the model with experimental data for bulk solid argon. Mean lat-
Fixed boundary 0.402 0.075 tice temperatures were found by spatially averaging the steady-
three regular planes state time-averaged temperatures of the regular atoms. Each data
Free boundary 0.474 0.051
five regular planes
point in the T⫽0.5 case has a different cross section, increasing
Fixed boundary 0.444 0.044 with the number of atoms from 2⫻2 to 8⫻8. The conductivities
five regular planes at each temperature, normalized by the dimensionless experimen-
tal value corresponding to that temperature 共关23兴兲, are illustrated
Fig. 4 Calculated and experimental bulk thermal conductivi-
ties at T Ä0.3 and 0.5 versus number of atoms Fig. 5 Planck spectral distribution. Shaded areas indicate the
fraction of total phonon emissive power allowed by the molecu-
lar dynamics simulation. „a… and „b… illustrate the effect of tem-
perature, and „c… and „d… illustrate the effect of domain size.
in Fig. 4. The error bars represent the normalized standard error of
thermal conductivity 共Eq. 共10兲兲 for each simulation.
For both temperatures, the calculated bulk thermal conductivity The figures also suggest a guideline: L/␭ peak(T) should be as
is observed to increase as the number of atoms is increased. The much larger than 1 as possible. This will make the phonon frac-
dependence of calculated macroscopic properties on the number tion approach 1, ensuring that molecular dynamics simulations
of particles in a molecular dynamics simulation is a well-known yield bulk-like results. A Wien’s law formulation for phonons can
artifact 关24兴. A recent example of the particle number dependence be used to estimate L/␭ peak(T). Taking the derivative of Eq. 共12兲,
of bulk thermal conductivity can be found in Kaburaki et al.’s iterating for C 2 , and substituting yields
关25兴 calculation of solid bulk argon thermal conductivity for 256
and 500-atom systems, which shows a similar number dependence ␭ peakT⯝0.2 L/␭ peak⯝5LT. (14)
to that found in the present paper at comparable temperatures. The Increasing the computational domain size at a given temperature,
key to getting accurate bulk results from the molecular dynamics as is shown going from Fig. 5共c兲 to Fig. 5共d兲, also increases the
technique is to choose conditions that allow the finite simulation fraction allowed by the simulation. In the limit of infinite domain
cell to represent, as closely as is feasible, an infinite bulk domain. size the fraction becomes 1, but as discussed above, using higher
True bulk-like behavior is indicated by minimal size dependence temperatures is the most computationally economical choice.
of the calculated values. Ideally, this could be accomplished by A simulation cell size of 512 atoms, which corresponds to a
simulating a very large number of atoms, but in practice this is system with eight regular x-planes of 4⫻4 cross section, yields
computationally quite burdensome. thermal conductivity values at T⫽0.5 not much smaller than
It can be seen in Fig. 4 that the results at T⫽0.3, as compared those with a significantly larger number of atoms. For computa-
to those at T⫽0.5, display a steeper number dependence and con- tional efficiency it was thus assumed that four unit cells were
stitute a smaller portion of their corresponding bulk experimental adequate to represent infinite length in a particular direction. In
value. This shows that for the same number of atoms, simulations
run at higher temperatures better capture bulk behavior. A simple
explanation for the more bulk-like behavior at higher temperatures
is that the phonon mean free path is shorter, so the ratio of the
mean free path to characteristic simulation cell dimension is
smaller. In the bulk limit, this ratio is much less than 1.
Another interpretation is offered by the concept of phonon ra-
diation 共关26兴兲. This concept, strictly valid in the ballistic limit of
heat conduction in which the local thermodynamic equilibrium is
not reached, can nevertheless offer some value in understanding
the current results. Figure 5 thus uses the Planck formula 共关27兴兲
e 共 ␭ 兲 ⫽2 ␲ C 1 /␭ 5 共 e C 2 /␭T ⫺1 兲 (12)
to estimate the spectral distribution for phonon ‘‘emissive power’’
under various conditions of temperature and computational do-
main size. Here the constants
C 1 ⫽h v 2s C 2 ⫽h v s /k B (13)
are defined using the speed of sound rather than the speed of light.
Figures 5共a兲 and 5共b兲 show that for a given maximum allowed
phonon wavelength, which is equal to the characteristic dimension
of the simulation cell, raising the temperature increases the
allowed phonon fraction due to the decreased peak phonon Fig. 6 Calculated, bulk experimental, and equation of photon
wavelength. radiative transfer „EPRT… thermal conductivities versus film
thickness at various temperatures
the perpendicular thermal conductivity simulations of the follow- mean free path. Thicker films may need to be simulated in order
ing section, then, 4⫻4 cross sections were used to represent ‘‘in- to see unmistakable asymptotic behavior. On the other hand, it is
finite’’ length in the y and z-directions. possible that asymptotic behavior is occurring, and that it is sim-
ply obscured within the envelope of the error bars.
Perpendicular Thermal Conductivity. Figure 6 displays the The fourth observation is that within error, the bulk thermal
calculation results for normalized perpendicular thermal conduc- conductivities in Fig. 4 are the same as the T⫽0.3 and 0.5 thin-
tivity versus dimensionless film thickness at several mean lattice film conductivities for comparable x-direction thickness. This re-
temperatures. A thin film thermal conductivity estimate based on sult was puzzling at first, because it contradicted the expectation
Majumdar’s equation of phonon radiative transfer 共关28兴兲 is shown that the calculated bulk values would always exceed calculated
for comparison. As in the bulk case, the results at each tempera- thin-film values even for comparable domain sizes. Phonon mode
ture are normalized by the experimental conductivity value at that counting in solid state physics, however, indicates that periodic
temperature. For clarity, film thickness is nondimensionalized by boundary conditions 共bulk兲 and fixed end boundary conditions
a rather than by the typically used ␴ LJ and only one error bar is 共thin film兲 yield the same number of phonon modes for the same
shown for each set of temperature data. The error bar magnitude number of atoms 共关31兴兲. This means that the abovementioned pho-
corresponds not to the actual calculated error at the corresponding non fraction for similarly sized bulk and thin film configurations is
thickness, but to the largest error of the set, which occurs at the similar, so the thermal conductivity will also be similar. There is
dimensionless thickness 4.5 for all sets. A heat flux value of 1.5 nothing intrinsic about periodic boundary conditions that changes
was used in the T⫽0.6 case because the higher fluxes cause its value to differ from the thin film value. Support for this argu-
steady state to be reached sooner. Film thickness, which was var- ment can also be found in Table 2, which illustrates the effect of
ied by adding/subtracting atomic x-planes to/from the computa- free versus fixed boundary conditions on thin film thermal con-
tional cell, corresponds to the thickness of the regular atoms plus ductivity. The results imply that the thermal conductivity calcu-
the thickness of the three hot x-planes and the three cold x-planes lated in a molecular dynamics simulation is affected by the physi-
nearest the regular atoms. cal dimension of the film but not by the boundary conditions.
It is critically important to note that unlike the bulk simulations
discussed above, which in the ideal case display little size/number Effect of Varying Computational Parameters. To investi-
dependence, thin film simulations should reveal thickness- gate the effect of the chosen parameters on the thin film molecular
dependent properties due to the effect of the boundaries. As the dynamics results, several simulations with differing values of
film thickness increases, the boundary effect should be less pro- these parameters were run. As discussed above, changing the
nounced and the calculated results should approach the bulk ther- boundary configuration has no effect on the calculated thermal
mal conductivity value. As anticipated, Fig. 6 shows that thermal conductivity. It does, however, influence the magnitude of the
conductivity at all temperatures increases with film thickness. The temperature profile. The fixed boundary profile is higher than the
unexpected undulation of the T⫽0.5 curve is fully contained free boundary profile for both the 3 and 5-regular plane cases
within the envelope of its error bars. listed in Table 2. The profile for the 5-plane case is plotted in Fig.
Four observations should be made from the calculated data. The 2. The discrepancy in the temperature profiles is probably caused
first is that the conductivities of lower-temperature films constitute by the two percent expansion exhibited by the free-boundary film.
a smaller fraction of their corresponding bulk values than identi- Expansion causes an increase in the LJ potential energy, resulting
cally sized higher-temperature films. This is in agreement with the in a decreased kinetic energy and thus a decreased temperature.
temperature trends displayed by the bulk results, and shows that Also, it can be seen from Fig. 2 that the adiabatic walls present in
thin-film size effects are more pronounced at lower temperatures. the fixed boundary case appear to have some moderating effect on
The second is that the molecular dynamics values for thermal the temperatures of the outermost hot and cold planes. Since the
conductivity at T⫽0.6, while showing the same trend as the equa- boundary condition simulations use a lower flux, it was also nec-
tion of photon radiative transfer results at the same temperature, essary to explore the influence of this parameter. Table 3 shows
are higher in magnitude. This can be explained by the fact that the that varying the flux for a film with three regular planes at T
mean free path and v s values used in Eq. 共4兲 above were inserted ⫽0.5 does not cause any significant change in thermal conductiv-
into the equation of photon radiative transfer model. The mean ity. The use of a different flux for the boundary condition simu-
free path, as estimated above, is only a ballpark figure, and v s is lations is thus unlikely to be the cause of any unusual effects.
undoubtedly on the low side since it is for high-density fluid Another parameter investigated in the simulations was the num-
argon. ber of unit cells in each hot/cold region. The thickness of these
The third observation is that while the expected behavior is an ‘‘bath’’ regions was reduced to 1 unit cell from the usual value of
asymptotic increase of the thin film results toward the bulk value, 2 unit cells to see the effect on thermal conductivity. Figure 7
the thicker films for the T⫽0.5 and 0.6 cases appear to have illustrates that bath regions do contribute to thermal conductivity,
thermal conductivities that exceed their corresponding experimen- because decreasing their thickness decreases the conductivity
tal bulk values. This discrepancy is about 30 percent for the T value. This suggests that the thickness of the film should be de-
⫽0.6 case. Using a similar nonhomogeneous nonequilibrium fined not just in terms of the thickness of the regular atomic
method on a fluid argon system of comparable size to these planes, but should also include the thickness of the bath atoms.
thicker films, Ciccotti and Tenenbaum 关29兴 calculated a bulk ther- Including the entire thickness of the bath regions in the length
mal conductivity 20 percent above the experimental value. A rea- would effectively shift the two unit cells/bath curve 共henceforth
son for these discrepancies could be the fact that experimental called ‘‘A’’兲 two thickness units to the right relative to the one
samples always contain impurities and imperfections that reduce unit cell/bath curve 共‘‘B’’兲. This, however, would cause a differ-
thermal conductivity below its ideal maximum value. The ent discrepancy: the conductivity for B would be higher than that
‘‘sample’’ in the simulation, in contrast, is a perfectly pure single
crystal. As its thickness increases it is reasonable that the conduc-
tivity may at some point exceed the experimental value while still
Table 3 Effect of imposed flux on thermal conductivity
being lower than the ideal maximum value. Also, there is no ob-
vious reduction in the rate of conductivity increase for the thicker Thermal
films, whose maximum thickness 10.5 corresponds to about five Flux Conductivity Error
times the mean free path. An explanation may be that the results
0.6 0.699 0.144
affirm the validity of the criterion of Flik et al. 关30兴, which holds 1.0 0.731 0.149
that perpendicular thin film thermal conductivity size effects are 1.4 0.683 0.095
important when the film thickness is smaller than seven times the
Table 4 Effect of simulation time on thermal conductivity
Percentage
4 Ã 4 ␶run , 6 Ã 6 ␶run , due to ␶run
Configuration ␶run Ratio ␴k Ratio Difference
32.9 ps, 260.0 ps 7.90 3.92 50%
3 regular planes
45.9 ps, 360.0 ps 7.84 4.87 62%
5 regular planes
61.1 ps, 400.0 ps 6.55 4.62 71%
7 regular planes
128.4 ps, 440.0 ps 3.43 2.63 77%
9 regular planes
147.9 ps, 440.0 ps 2.97 2.70 91%
11 regular planes
169.6 ps, 440.0 ps 2.59 2.43 94%
13 regular planes
Fig. 7 Effect of number of unit cells per bath on thermal used for the 6⫻6 runs were always longer than those for the 4
conductivity ⫻4 runs. Since ␴ T l in Eq. 共3兲 is roughly inversely proportional to
the square root of ␶ run , it can be seen that the thermal conductivity
error is approximately inversely proportional to ␶ run . This can be
for A. If only the first three hot and cold bath planes 共1.5 unit used to estimate the effect of simulation time on error and to try to
cells兲 nearest the regular layers are included in the definition of isolate the effect of cross section. The steady-state time ratio in
film thickness rather than all four bath planes 共2 unit cells兲 on Table 4 is found by dividing ␶ run for the 6⫻6 case by that for the
each side, A shifts one thickness unit to the right and falls directly 4⫻4 case, and the thermal conductivity error ratio is found by
on top of B. This is the desired result, because the same thickness dividing the error of the 4⫻4 case by that of the 6⫻6 case for the
of atoms at the same temperature should necessarily produce the various film thicknesses at their corresponding steady-state simu-
same calculated value of thermal conductivity. The fact that only lation times. The percentage column divides the error ratio by the
three of the bath planes on either side appear to influence thermal time ratio, and is an estimate of the percentage of the difference in
conductivity is reasonable, since the cutoff radius 2.6␴ LJ corre- error between the 4⫻4 and 6⫻6 cases that is due to differences
sponds to a thickness of 1.7 unit cells. The fourth plane is two unit in simulation time. Table 4 indicates that for large ␶ run , most of
cells away from the regular atoms and thus is too distant to inter- the difference in error between 4⫻4 and 6⫻6 thermal conduc-
act with them. This also indicates that three planes of fixed atoms tivity results is attributable to the simulation time difference,
rather than four could be used to represent the fixed wall boundary while at small ␶ run , the cross section difference appears to make
condition. some contribution to the difference in error. Increasing the cross
The final parameter investigated was the cross section. Figure 8 section, increasing the number of time steps, or increasing both
shows thermal conductivity versus film thickness at T⫽0.5 for yields more precise thermal conductivity results. Longer simula-
4⫻4 and 6⫻6 cross sections. The error bars for the 4⫻4 case tion times are more desirable, however, since they are less com-
were made heavier than the 6⫻6 error bars for clarity. Within the putationally demanding than larger cross sections. As in the dis-
error bars, the 6⫻6 case shows no discernible increase in thermal cussion of local thermodynamic equilibrium above, it is
conductivity over the 4⫻4 case. Since large lateral dimensions concluded that longer simulation times are the best way to obtain
were not necessary to obtain good thermal conductivity values, good thermal conductivity values from molecular dynamics simu-
this result implies that the 4⫻4 case is large enough to capture the lations.
essential physics. Also, the unusual curvature discussed above for
the 4⫻4 case disappears and the error bars shrink considerably. Concluding Remarks
These two effects cannot be attributed to the increased cross sec-
tion alone, however, because the steady-state simulation times This paper explores the thermal conductivity of solid systems in
both bulk and thin-film configurations using the molecular dynam-
ics computational technique. As expected, the argon model yields
results close to experimental data for bulk materials and predicts
increased thermal conductivity observed for thin-film materials as
film thickness is increased. Modest overprediction of thermal con-
ductivity observed for the thicker films is probably caused by the
perfect purity of the idealized argon model used in the simula-
tions. Normalized thermal conductivity is substantially reduced in
the colder films, indicating that thin film effects are more pro-
nounced at low temperatures. Bulk systems with larger character-
istic lengths and higher temperatures show better agreement with
experimental data than those with smaller values; mean free path
and maximum phonon wavelength arguments are presented to ex-
plain this behavior. Changing the boundary conditions and the
imposed fluxes in the thin film simulations produces no significant
change in thermal conductivity.
Two important criteria for valid molecular dynamics simula-
tions are that the calculated effective flux be nearly the same as
the imposed flux and that the temperature profiles be reasonably
close to linear. The following recommendations are suggested as
computationally efficient ways to satisfy these criteria. First, the
Fig. 8 Effect of cross section on thermal conductivity smallest cross section possible that yields reasonable conductivity
values should be used. Second, a good initial choice for ␶ run is 20 ␶ corr ⫽ correlation time
times the characteristic thermal diffusion time. Third, to reduce ␶ run ⫽ steady state simulation run time
the error for a particular simulation, simulation time should be ␾ LJ ⫽ Lennard-Jones interatomic potential
increased rather than cross section. Fourth, if the exact value of
temperature is not critical, simulations should be run at as high a Superscript
temperature as is feasible. High fluxes are also desired because * ⫽ dimensionless
they too cause quicker attainment of steady state and better aver-
aging. Finally, fixed boundary simulations should be used for thin References
films because they allow the stable simulation of a wide range of
conditions. 关1兴 Osinski, M., 1991, ‘‘Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Semiconductor Lasers:
Present Status and Future Prospects,’’ Proc. SPIE, 1418, pp. 2–24.
This work has shown that molecular dynamics can be a power- 关2兴 Inoue, R., Tanaka, H., and Nakanishi, K., 1996, ‘‘Molecular Dynamics Simu-
ful tool for predicting the thermal behavior of solid thin films. lation Study of the Anomalous Thermal Conductivity of Clathrate Hydrates,’’
Future work should be done to apply this versatile, conceptually J. Chem. Phys., 104, pp. 9569–9577.
simple technique to microscale problems where other experimen- 关3兴 Mountain, R. D., and MacDonald, R. A., 1983, ‘‘Thermal Conductivity of
Crystals: A Molecular-Dynamics Study of Heat Flow in a Two-Dimensional
tal and analytical approaches are difficult. The molecular dynam- Crystal,’’ Phys. Rev. B, 28, pp. 3022–3025.
ics technique is especially suited to study the thermophysical 关4兴 Kaburaki, H., and Machida, M., 1993, ‘‘Thermal Conductivity in One-
properties of disordered materials such as doped and nanoporous Dimensional Lattices of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Type,’’ Phys. Lett. A, 181, pp.
thin films and materials with voids, cracks, dislocations, or other 85–90.
关5兴 Kotake, S., and Wakuri, S., 1994, ‘‘Molecular Dynamics Study of Heat Con-
complex geometries. duction in Solid Materials,’’ JSME Int. J. Ser. B, 37, pp. 103–108.
关6兴 Volz, S., and Chen, G., 1999, ‘‘Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Thermal
Acknowledgments Conductivity of Silicon Nanowires,’’ Appl. Phys. Lett., 75, pp. 2056–2058.
关7兴 Allen, M. P., and Tildesley, D. J., 1987, Computer Simulation of Liquids,
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.
National Science Foundation. 关8兴 Car, R., 1996, ‘‘Modeling Materials by Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics,’’
Quantum Theory of Real Materials, Chelikowsky, J. R., and Louie, S. G., eds.,
Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 23–37.
Nomenclature 关9兴 Kristensen, W. D., Jensen, E. J., and Cotterill, R. M. J., 1974, ‘‘Thermody-
namics of Small Clusters of Atoms: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation,’’ J.
a ⫽ lattice constant Chem. Phys., 60, pp. 4161–4169.
b ⫽ slope of line fitted to temperature profile of regular 关10兴 Chou, F. C., Lukes, J. R., Liang, X. G., Takahashi, K., and Tien, C. L., 1999,
atoms ‘‘Molecular Dynamics in Microscale Thermophysical Engineering,’’ Ann.
C 1 ,C 2 ⫽ constants in Planck formula Rev. Heat Transf., 10, pp. 141–176.
关11兴 Swope, W. C., Andersen, H. C., Berens, P. H., and Wilson, K. R., 1982, ‘‘A
e ⫽ phonon spectral ‘‘emissive power’’ Computer Simulation Method for the Calculation of Equilibrium Constants for
f ⫽ distribution of x, y, or z-velocity component the Formation of Physical Clusters of Molecules: Application to Small Water
h ⫽ Planck’s constant Clusters,’’ J. Chem. Phys., 76, pp. 637–649.
k ⫽ thermal conductivity 关12兴 Ikeshoji, T., and Hafskjold, B., 1994, ‘‘Non-equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Calculation of Heat Conduction in Liquid and through Liquid-Gas Interface,’’
k B ⫽ Boltzmann’s constant Mol. Phys., 81, pp. 251–261.
L ⫽ shortest characteristic simulation cell dimension 关13兴 Jacucci, G., and Rahman, A., 1984, ‘‘Comparing the Efficiency of Metropolis
l ⫽ particular regular atomic plane Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics Methods for Configuration Space Sam-
MFP ⫽ mean free path pling,’’ Nuovo Cimento, D4, pp. 341–356.
关14兴 Dobbs, E. R., and Jones, G. O., 1957, ‘‘Theory and Properties of Solid Ar-
m ⫽ atomic mass gon,’’ Rep. Prog. Phys., 20, pp. 516–564.
N l ⫽ number of atoms in plane l 关15兴 Dugdale, J. S., and MacDonald, D. K. C., 1955, ‘‘Lattice Thermal Conductiv-
p ⫽ total number of regular atomic planes ity,’’ Phys. Rev., 98, pp. 1751–1752.
q eff ⫽ effective heat flux in x-direction 关16兴 CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 1996, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
关17兴 Volz, S., Saulnier, J.-B., Lallemand, M., Perrin, B., Depondt, P., and Mare-
具 q l 典 ⫽ time-averaged actual heat flux in x-direction through schal, M., 1996, ‘‘Transient Fourier-law Deviation by Molecular Dynamics in
plane l Solid Argon,’’ Phys. Rev. B, 54, pp. 340–347.
R ⫽ rescaling factor 关18兴 Press, W. H., Teukolsky, S. A., Vetterling, W. T., and Flannery, B. P., 1992,
r i j ⫽ distance between atoms i and j Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN: The Art of Scientific Computing, 2nd Ed.,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
T ⫽ temperature 关19兴 Irving, J. H., and Kirkwood, J. G., 1950, ‘‘The Statistical Mechanical Theory
T l ⫽ temperature of plane l of Transport Processes. IV. The Equations of Hydrodynamics,’’ J. Chem.
具 T l 典 ⫽ time-averaged temperature of plane l Phys., 18, pp. 817–829.
关20兴 Lukes, J. R., 2000, ‘‘Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Thermal Conduction
v c ⫽ x, y, or z-velocity component
in Thin Films and Nanoporous Materials,’’ Ph.D. thesis, University of Cali-
v i ⫽ velocity of atom i fornia, Berkeley, CA, in progress.
v s ⫽ speed of sound 关21兴 Tenenbaum, A., Ciccotti, G., and Gallico, R., 1982, ‘‘Stationary Nonequilib-
v sub ⫽ velocity subtracted from rescaled velocity rium States by Molecular Dynamics,’’ Phys. Rev. A, 25, pp. 2778–2787.
关22兴 Hafskjold, B., and Ratkje, S. K., 1995, ‘‘Criteria for Local Equilibrium in a
Greek Symbols System with Transport of Heat and Mass,’’ J. Stat. Phys., 78, pp. 463–494.
关23兴 Touloukian, Y. S., Liley, P. E., and Saxena, S. C., eds., 1970, Thermal Con-
␧ LJ ⫽ Lennard-Jones well depth parameter ductivity: Nonmetallic Liquids and Gases, IFI/Plenum, New York.
␭ ⫽ phonon wavelength 关24兴 Haile, J. M., 1992, Molecular Dynamics Simulation: Elementary Methods,
␭ max ⫽ maximum phonon wavelength allowed by simulation Wiley, New York.
domain 关25兴 Kaburaki, H., Li, J., and Yip, S., 1999, ‘‘Thermal Conductivity of Solid Argon
by Classical Molecular Dynamics,’’ Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc., 538, pp.
␭ peak ⫽ peak phonon wavelength at a given temperature 503–508.
␴ b ⫽ probable error of slope 关26兴 Casimir, H. B. G., 1938, ‘‘Note on the Conduction of Heat in Crystals,’’
␴ k ⫽ probable error of thermal conductivity Physica, 5, pp. 495–500.
␴ LJ ⫽ Lennard-Jones equilibrium separation parameter 关27兴 Siegel, R., and Howell, J. R., 1981, Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer, 2nd Ed.,
Hemisphere, Washington, DC.
␴ q eff ⫽ probable error of effective flux 关28兴 Majumdar, A., 1993, ‘‘Microscale Heat Conduction in Dielectric Thin Films,’’
␴ 具 q l 典 ⫽ standard error of the time-averaged flux through ASME J. Heat Transfer, 115, pp. 7–16.
关29兴 Ciccotti, G., and Tenenbaum, A., 1980, ‘‘Canonical Ensemble and Nonequi-
plane l librium States by Molecular Dynamics,’’ J. Stat. Phys., 23, pp. 767–772.
␴ T l ⫽ standard deviation of the temperature of plane l 关30兴 Flik, M. I., Choi, B. I., and Goodson, K. E., 1992, ‘‘Heat Transfer Regimes in
␴ 具 T l 典 ⫽ standard error of the time-averaged temperature of Microstructures,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 114, pp. 666–674.
关31兴 Kittel, C., 1996, Introduction to Solid State Physics, 7th Ed., Wiley, New
plane l York.
An Experimental Study of Molten
Microdroplet Surface Deposition
and Solidification: Transient
Behavior and Wetting Angle
Dynamics
The basic problem of the impact and solidification of molten droplets on a substrate is of
central importance to a host of processes. An important and novel such process in the
D. Attinger area of micromanufacturing is solder jetting where microscopic solder droplets are dis-
pensed for the attachment of microelectronic components. Despite the recent appearance
Z. Zhao of a few numerical studies focusing on the complex transient aspects of this process, no
analogous experimental results have been reported to date to the best of our knowledge.
D. Poulikakos Such a study is reported in this paper. Eutectic solder (63Sn37Pb) was melted to a preset
superheat and used in a specially designed droplet generator to produce droplets with
Laboratory of Thermodynamics diameters in the range 50–100 ␮m. In a first series of experiments, the size, temperature,
in Emerging Technologies, and impacting speed of the molten droplets were maintained constant. The primary vari-
Institute of Energy Technology, able was the temperature of the substrate that was controlled in the range from 48°C to
Swiss Federal Institute of 135°C. The dynamics of molten solder microdroplet impact and solidification on the
Technology (ETH), substrate was investigated using a flash microscopy technique. The time for the comple-
8092 Zurich, Switzerland tion of solidification from the moment of a solder droplet impact on the substrate varies
between 150 ␮s and 350 ␮s. The dynamic interaction between the oscillation in the liquid
region and the rapid advance of the solidification front was visualized, quantified, and
presented in this paper. In a second series of experiments, the evolution of the wetting
angle between the spreading drop and the substrate was recorded and analyzed. No
quantitative agreement with Hoffman’s correlation for wetting was found. It was estab-
lished that the wetting angle dynamics is strongly coupled with the evolution of the
droplet free surface. Two successive regimes were distinguished during the spreading.
The influence of the initial impact velocity and substrate temperature on the dynamics of
the measured wetting angle was described in both regimes. To the best of our knowledge,
this study presents the first published experimental results on the transient fluid dynamics
and solidification of molten microdroplets impacting on a substrate at the above-
mentioned time and length scales that are directly relevant to the novel solder jetting
technology. 关S0022-1481共00兲01403-1兴
Keywords: Droplet, Heat Transfer, Manufacturing, Microscale, Visualization
1 Introduction phenomena, such as the dynamic behavior of the wetting angle

between the substrate and the droplet 共关5兴兲, the thermal contact
Scientific research interest on droplet-surface interactions has
resistance between splat and substrate as well as the rapid solidi-
recently increased, driven by a need for an in-depth understanding
fication phenomenon 共关6兴兲, including heterogeneous nucleation
of new aspects of droplet impact phenomena that are important to
and recalescence, as well as the possible remelting of the substrate
emerging technologies such as spray deposition 共关1,2兴兲 and pi-
共关7兴兲. These are typical mesoscopic phenomena, whose physics is
coliter size solder droplet dispensing. Picoliter size droplet dis-
often related to microscopic phenomena and cannot be understood
pensing 共the application to which the present work is directly
using the classical continuum approach. A common way to handle
relevant兲 is used for advanced surface mount technologies 共SMT兲
these mesoscopic phenomena is to match experiments with nu-
in the packaging of electronic microchips. In this technology,
monodispersed arrays of molten metal microdroplets 共25–100 ␮m merical or analytical models in order to estimate the needed model
in diameter兲 are printed on a substrate, each microdroplet 共or parameters. Using this approach, several temperature measure-
bump兲 forming an electrical connection. Important advantages of ments under relatively large 共mm size兲 solidifying droplets have
picoliter size droplet dispensing over other bumping technologies been performed and matched with numerical simulations in order
are the flexibility and low cost, because neither masks nor screens to estimate the values of the thermal contact resistance between
are required 共关3,4兴兲. the splat and the substrate 共关8–10兴兲 or to estimate the nucleation
Many physical phenomena related to the prediction of bump temperature 共关8兴兲.
shape and metallic properties are not well understood. There is The evolution of the wetting angle during droplet spreading
still a lack of basic understanding and modeling capabilities for also contains largely unresolved physics. The wetting angle be-
havior at the molecular level is governed by intermolecular forces
共关11兴兲. The relation, if any, between the molecular angle and the
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Oct. 25, 1999; macroscopic angle 共visible with a low-power microscope, and
revision received, Apr. 11, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: T. Avedisian. measured in the present study兲 is also not well established 共关12兴兲.
Empirical correlations, such as Hoffman’s law 共关13兴兲, express the impact events per drop, one can capture different stages of the
dynamic evolution of the macroscopic wetting angle ␣ as a func- process in each event and piece together from images of droplets
tion of the capillary number Ca and of the equilibrium wetting taken at progressive stages the entire impact, spreading, and so-
angle ␣ eq , for steady flows under conditions of negligible Weber lidification process. Key parameters describing the droplet spread-
number 共关12兴兲. In the impact of a droplet on a flat surface, the ing process, i.e., splat/substrate contact area, splat diameter, and
fluid dynamics is unsteady and the Weber number based on the thickness as well as the wetting angle 共关9兴兲, can be subsequently
contact line velocity is not negligible. Therefore, the motion of the measured from the recorded pictures of spreading droplets. The
droplet free surface near the contact line and the dynamics of the flash techniques rely therefore on the generation of droplets in a
bulk fluid may influence the value of the wetting angle. Further- highly repeatable manner 共关22,25,24,26兴兲 since the impact process
more, in a molten droplet impact, there is the additional contribu- is reconstructed from images of several impact events.
tion of heat transfer, which can drastically change flow properties Good quality images of a droplet spreading process have been
by glassification, or can even arrest the motion of the contact line reported in the literature using short-duration flash photography
by solidification. Fukai et al. 关14兴 and Pasandideh-Fard et al. 关9兴共关22,9兴兲 for millimeter-size droplets, and flash videography 共关26兴兲
used experimentally measured advancing and receding wetting for droplet diameters of the order of 60 ␮m to about 1 mm. To
angles in their numerical models to study the effects of surface exemplify, the study of Pasandideh-Fard et al. 关9兴 reports a visu-
wetting on the spreading and recoiling motion of a droplet after alization of impact and solidification of relatively large 共approx. 2
impingement on a dry surface. However, since these angles and mm兲 liquid metal tin drops on a cold substrate. Hence, the result-
substrate temperatures have been measured for rather larger sys- ing Weber number value of We⫽71 does not correspond to the
tems, with respect to both time and space scales, the question relatively low Weber domain (4⬍We⬍10) encountered in pi-
arises if the conclusions can be applied to smaller scales of the coliter size solder droplet dispensing that is the focus of the
kind found in picoliter size solder droplet dispensing and spray present research. In the present study a flash videography tech-
casting. nique, coupled with a digital grabbing of the images for the ease
A promising approach to obtain direct insight in the thermo- of postprocessing, is developed and implemented.
physics of picoliter-size molten droplet impact is the high-speed
visualization of such a process. If it were possible to observe, with 2 Experimental Setup
enough time and space resolution, the spreading and solidification
dynamics of picoliter solder droplet impact, in addition to the 2.1 Molten Solder Microdroplet Deposition System. To
direct information that the experiments would provide, a compari- investigate the dynamic process of impact and solidification of
son with numerical studies of the same problem, such as those by picoliter size molten metal droplet on the surface of a semicon-
Waldvogel and Poulikakos 关15兴 and by Xiong et al. 关16兴, would ductor device, a molten solder microdroplet jetting device was set
be feasible. Such experiments are reported in the present paper. A up at ETH Zurich with technical assistance from MicroFab Tech-
key finding of the above two papers is that a strong coupling nologies Inc. 共Dallas, TX兲. The method used for the generation of
monodispersed picoliter-size droplets of solder at demand with the
occurs between heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and phase change,
potential of use in the manufacturing of electronic components
leading to a wavy surface of the solder bumps. Although this
was described in 共关3兴兲 and 共关29兴兲, and is summarized as follows.
wavy surface appears in both numerical and experimental studies
By applying an electric pulse to a piezoelectric material not in
共the latter yielding only the shape of the completely solidified
direct contact with the fluid, picoliter volumes of molten metal are
microbump兲, there is still a significant discrepancy between nu-
ejected from an orifice at demand in accordance with the electric
merical results and final shape micrographs 共关16兴兲. A visualization
pulse frequency. After oscillating, the ejected tiny amount of
of the microdroplet in motion accompanied by relevant quantita-
metal assumes a spherical shape due to minimization of surface
tive measurements contributes significantly to the understanding
tension energy. The process is termed solder jetting at demand.
of this phenomenon.
The jetting apparatus used in the present study is shown schemati-
A variety of visualization techniques have been applied in the
cally in Fig. 1.
experimental investigations of droplet impact dynamics, including Solder is melted in an enclosed reservoir by resistance heating.
high-speed camera techniques 共关17–21兴兲, flash photography 共关22– The molten solder reservoir is pressurized with nitrogen to insu-
24兴兲, and flash videography 共关25–26兴兲. There is one basic distinc- late the melt with a chemically inert environment and provide
tion between high-speed camera and flash techniques: the former back pressure for jetting. A nitrogen flowing as a curtain around
records the highest number of frames from a single event, while the path of the droplet toward the substrate limits the interaction
the latter reconstructs the event by patching together several with the surrounding air and prevents, at least to a good extent,
frames taken at different instants from several reproducible
events. In our case, the expected short duration of the phenom-
enon 共of the order of 100 microseconds兲 prevented the use of most
high-speed cameras. For example, even a very fast CCD camera
such as the Kodak EKTAPRO 共40, 500 partial frames per second
and available in our laboratory兲 could only give a rough qualita-
tive recording of the phenomenon. Intensified CCD cameras have
a time delay between two frames smaller than 50 ns and could
have solved the time resolution problem. However, this expensive
technology only allows recording a limited number of frames 共8 to
30兲 of a single event 共关27兴兲 so that the reconstruction problematic
of one event from several reproducible events would have arisen
in this case as well. The high-speed 16-mm camera technique has
not been considered because of its complex machinery, high costs,
and difficulty of implementation 共关28兴兲.
In contrast with the methods discussed above, the flash photog-
raphy and flash videography techniques are stroboscopic methods
whereby a variable number of short-pulse illuminations 共1 to 10
pulses兲 are produced at specific instants during each event and
recorded by a 35-mm camera or a CCD camera, respectively. By Fig. 1 Schematic of the picoliter size solder droplet deposition
generating a sequence of identical drops and practically identical apparatus
droplet oxidation. Molten solder temperatures in the reservoir and
the capillary tube are both monitored by thermocouples and con-
trolled through the heaters. The waveform of the drive pulse for
solder jetting is electronically generated and digitally controlled.
By varying the waveform, the diameter and the velocity of ejected
solder droplets can be altered in the ranges of 50–100 ␮m and
1–2.5 m/s, respectively. The alloy used in this study is a eutectic
tin lead solder 共63 percent Sn-37 percent Pb兲 with 99.99 percent
purity, specially developed for solder jetting by Witmetaal B. V.,
Holland. Delay time between droplet ejection can be changed by
varying the waveform driver frequency for droplet generation.
However, the repeatability of droplet diameter and ejection veloc-
ity is greatly improved when the frequency of droplet ejection is
maintained constant during the experiment. In the present study, a
droplet generation frequency of 12 Hz was used. Fig. 2 Flash videography technique used for recording the
After ejection from the orifice, a solder droplet travels approxi- solder droplet deposition process
mately 1 mm and impacts the substrate mounted horizontally on a
motorized x-y precision stage 共Photon Control PTS 1000, En-
gland兲. The substrate in the present study is a semiconductor wa- jittering, with a flash energy of 0.1 J/burst. The time resolution of
fer 共EM Marin, Switzerland兲 cut to a die size of approximately the sequence recording is also increased up to 300 nanoseconds
10⫻50 mm. The wafer consists of the following layers from top during the first stage of the spreading.
to bottom: 0.1-␮m-thick Au, 0.3-␮m Ti90W alloy, 1-␮m silicon Images of the droplets are acquired with a Jai M10 progressive
nitride 共conductivity ␭⫽2.33(⫹⫺0.11) Wm⫺1K⫺1, heat capacity scan CCD camera 共Denmark兲 in triggered mode and are digitized
␳ c p ⫽2.62(⫹⫺0.22) * 10⫺6 Jm⫺3 K⫺1兲共关30兴兲 and 675-␮m and stored in the image processing PC. An example of the picture
P-silicon. The substrate wafer slide is mounted on a heated copper quality of a droplet in motion is given in Fig. 3共b兲. As a result of
plate with a thin layer of thermal interface paste 共HTC Electro- high power optical magnification, the ambient light introduces
lube, England兲 between the wafer and the copper plate, with ␭ little optical noise on droplet images, and the flash light acts there-
⫽0.84 Wm⫺1 K⫺1. The wafer top (T 2,0) and bottom (T 3,0) surface fore as a shutter. The waveform generator that activates the solder
initial temperatures are measured with two K-type thermocouples
共Omega 304 SS9兲, the former being epoxied on the wafer with a
1-mm-size island of conductive epoxy 共AV138M/HV998 Novar-
tis, Switzerland兲 with ␭⫽0.6 Wm⫺1 K⫺1. The bead diameter of
the thermocouples is 250 ␮m. The copper plate temperature was
PID-controlled to vary T 2,0 between 48°C and 135°C. Since the
wafer slides used in printing have to be frequently replaced, the
temperature measurements are carried out on another wafer slide,
permanently deposited on the copper plate, and moved under the
printhead at the same conditions as the wafer slide where droplets
impact. Both radiation from the metallic parts of the printing de-
vice and convection from the co-flow increased significantly the
wafer temperatures. The x-y stage motion 共2 mm/s兲 is so slow that
the thermocouples reach a steady-state value before passing under
the jet orifice and maintain it after passing by the jet orifice.
Therefore the transient temperature effect is considered to be
negligible.
2.2 Visualization of Solder Droplet Deposition Using Flash

Videography. As described in the Introduction, the technique
used for the visualization of droplet impact and solidification is a
flash videography technique 共关26兴兲 where only one image is taken
at one instant during the impact and solidification process for each
drop studied. The imaging system used to record the droplet depo-
sition process is shown schematically in Fig. 2.
Backlighting for the first series of experiments is provided by a
Xenon flash light unit 共Hamamatsu L4634兲. The flash energy is
0.15 J/flash and the duration of each burst of flash is 1 ␮s with
less than 200 ns jittering. The time resolution of the sequence
recording is set to 5 ␮s. A Fresnel lens is used to provide uniform
and intensified 共focused兲 backlighting field for the microscope.
The droplet images are magnified using a microscope objective
共Microtech Zoom 70, USA兲 with 29⫻optical magnification on the Fig. 3 Measured points on the droplet surface. Points A and G
CCD matrix plane, which provides a space resolution of 1.2 ␮m determine the droplet wetting area diameter. D is the highest
in the object plane. The conditions for the wetting angle measure- visible point of the surface, when viewing from the side, not
ment are slightly different from the first experiments in this paper. always at the axis of symmetry. The distance from D to seg-
ment AG determines the visible droplet height H above the sur-
The optical magnification is increased up to 36 times. In order to face „identified by the segment AG…. The shadow below the
capture the fast kinematics during the beginning of the spreading surface and the light spot inside the droplet are optical effects.
共with contact line velocities of the order of 2 to 4 m/s兲, a faster The accuracy in determining the vertical and horizontal posi-
Xenon flash light unit 共FX-HSPS, Wedel, Germany兲 is employed. tion of A and G decreases for wetting angle values near 90 deg,
It provides a shorter flash duration of 150 ns with less than 60 ns and larger than 110 deg, respectively.
jetting device sends a signal with a preset delay to trigger the flash
light when a solder droplet hits the substrate. To record the pro-
gressive stages of solder droplet spreading and solidification, the
delay time between droplet ejection and a burst of back lighting is
increased between successive images.
In order to provide a free impact surface for each impinging
droplet, the motorized x-y stage is maintained at a constant linear
speed of 2 mm/s in the focal plane of the microscope during
experimental runs. This translation velocity of 2 mm/s is about
three orders of magnitude smaller than the impact velocity of 1.5
m/s. In a reference frame attached to the translation stage, this
motion corresponds to a deviation from the vertical direction of
the impact smaller than 0.1 degrees, thus negligible.
2.3 Image Analysis and Discussion of the Experimental

Uncertainties. Image analysis is carried out using an image pro-
cessing software 共Optimas 6.2, Media Cybernetics, USA兲 that al-
lows the measurement of droplet area and the motion analysis of
selected points for a sequence of images. Figure 3 shows a mea-
surement example of droplet wetting area diameter 共distance be-
tween A and G兲 and droplet height 共distance from point D to
segment AG兲. It should be emphasized that such measurements
involve uncertainties, due to the human identification of the mea-
sured points. In the case of clearly defined points such as in Fig.
3共b兲, 20 measurements of the points on the same image yield a
standard deviation 共in percentage of the initial droplet diameter兲
of 0.06, 0.54, 0.91, 0.44 and 0.16 percent for the vertical position
of D, the distance between D and segment AG, and the position of
the single points A and G, as well as the wetting area diameter,
respectively. It is worth noting that a wetting angle ␣ larger than
110 deg can cause significant optical blurring 共as in Fig. 4, 30 ␮s兲,
and therefore increase the error for the wetting area diameter.
The choice of a flash videography technique that consists of
building an impact sequence from a series of single pictures, each
of them taken from a different droplet requires a highly reproduc-
ible process. There are several factors that can influence the re-
producibility of droplet release and solidification. We examined,
with the setup used for the first series of experiments, two possible Fig. 4 Spreading, oscillations, and freezing of a solder droplet
perturbation sources, i.e., the stability in the drop position and on a flat substrate. Initial conditions: v 0 Ä1.54 mÕs, d 0
velocity as well as the importance of the wafer heating due to the Ä80 ␮ m, T 1,0Ä210°C, T 2,0Ä48°C.
heat released by solidification of the previous drop.
The positions of the top, bottom, left, and right extreme points
of 99 solder droplets in the same conditions as in the experiment
have been measured with a constant delay between ejection and where n, E Q , ␳, V, and c p are the number of droplets, the heat
flash. The standard deviation in the horizontal position of the ex- released by droplet solidification and subcooling, the density, vol-
treme right and left position is, respectively, 1.32 percent and 1.46 ume, and heat capacity of each layer i of the wafer. In the case
percent of the diameter 共80 ␮m兲, and the standard deviation in the where 300 droplets 共i.e., 3 sequences of 100 drops兲 at 210°C
vertical position for the top and bottom points is 2.2 percent impact a wafer slide of the same composition as the one used in
共⫾1.76 ␮m兲 and 1.72 percent, respectively. The maximum stan- the experiments, we maintain that the wafer temperature increase
dard deviation in the vertical position corresponds to a jitter in the ⌬T is less than 0.1K, and is thus negligible. The transient effect of
droplet ejection of ⫾1.17 ␮s. Since this error is markedly larger the previous droplet impact on the actual drop can be calculated
than the error due to the human identification of the measured accurately numerically, but we obtained an acceptable estimate by
points, the major cause of uncertainties in the measurements is assuming that the entire E Q is released at time t⫽0 in a half-
due to the needed repeatability of the visualization technique. sphere of an infinite radius. In other words, we consider that each
The magnitude of wafer slide heating due to the heat released droplet acts as an instantaneous heat source on the surface. In this
by solidification of the previous drop has been evaluated in two case, an analytical relation exists for the temporal and local evo-
ways. First, we estimated the final increase in the wafer tempera- lution of the temperature 共关31兴兲. Considering a pitch distance be-
ture after the impact of a series of droplets that corresponds to our tween droplets of 166 micrometers 共corresponding to a printing
experimental conditions. Then, we estimated if the transient local frequency of 12 Hz兲, the maximum transient temperature variation
heat release of a previous drop would affect the initial conditions due to heat released by the previously impacting droplet for a
for the actual drop. The final temperature increase was estimated distance of 166 micrometers from the heating source, was found
as follows. Assuming that the heat released by the drops increases to be 0.03 K in a gold hemisphere and 0.13 K in a silicon hemi-
the wafer temperature uniformly, we express the temperature in- sphere, and is thus negligible.
crease ⌬T of a typical wafer slide 共10 mm by 50 mm surface兲: A further difference between the experiments and the ideal case
of a spherical droplet impinging on a substrate is that there are
nE Q still small residual shape oscillations from the ejection process at
⌬T⫽ (1) the instant of impact. Hence, the droplet shape at the time of
兺i
␳ i V i c pi impact is not absolutely spherical. This error can be estimated by
observing the maximum error in nonsphericity on the pictures
right before impact: At the distance used for printing, the diameter Table 1 Initial conditions for the first series of experiments
oscillation amplitude was ⫾5 percent of the droplet diameter. A pertaining to the overview of the spreading and solidification
series of measurements showed that the phase lag between the process
oscillations of the horizontal diameter and the vertical diameter v 0 (m/s) 1.52⫾0.06
equals ␲, thus this oscillation should not influence the measure- T 2,0(°C) 48 62 81 98 118 135
ment of droplet size, based on the visible area. Accordingly, the Re 381
measurement of droplet velocity before impact was based on the We 4.4
motion of the two points at the extreme left and right of the Ste 0.77 0.69 0.58 0.48 0.37 0.27
Oh 0.0055
droplet. Their height is a bit more difficult to determine than, for Pt 0.025
example, the height of the bottom point of the droplet, but it does
not oscillate in the vertical direction.
3 Results sequence, the time t⫽0 corresponds to the last picture before
impact. The maximum corresponding error in determining the
3.1 Experimental Conditions. Two series of experiments time t⫽0 when the droplet contacts the substrate is therefore 5
were performed. The first series was focused on the transient be- ␮s. The produced drops had a mean diameter d 0 in the range of
havior of the spreading and solidification process. The second 79.7 to 83.9 ␮m and a velocity v 0 in the range of 1.49 to 1.58 m/s,
series was focused on the wetting angle dynamics. In the first with average values of 81.4 ␮m and 1.52 m/s, respectively. The
series, sequences of molten solder microdroplet impingement on a characteristic numbers, defined in the Nomenclature, are shown in
colder wafer, such as those shown in Figs. 4 and 5, have been Table 1. They are based on the following values for the thermo-
recorded for different initial temperatures of the top surface of the physical properties: ␴ ⫽0.345 Jm⫺2, ␮ ⫽0.00262 Pa s, L
wafer 共T 2,0⫽48, 62, 81, 98, 118, and 135°C兲. The temperature ⫽42,000 J/kg, c pl ⫽238 J kg⫺1 K⫺1, ␭ 1 ⫽25 Wm⫺1 K⫺1, and T m
T 3,0 of the bottom surface of the wafer was measured to be in each ⫽183°C, and on the average measured values of velocities and
case 5 to 6 K lower than T 2,0 . Each sequence was reconstructed diameter.
from about 100 frames, the delay between drop release and flash The second series of experiments, focusing on the evolution of
being increased in steps of 5 ␮s between each frame. In each the wetting angle, was performed with a more precise lighting, an
increased optical magnification, and time resolution, as described
above. Four sequences of data were collected, where the surface
temperatures and the initial impact velocities were varied as
shown in Table 2. The mean value of the initial diameter d 0 was
slightly smaller than in the first series of experiments (74.1
⫾2 ␮ m), and has been used for the calculation of the Reynolds
and Weber numbers. The remaining experimental conditions were
the same as in the first series of experiments.
3.2 Qualitative Investigation of the Spreading and Solidi-

fication Process. Figure 4 shows a reconstructed sequence cor-
responding to an initial wafer temperature T 2,0 of 48°C. A quali-
tative inspection of Fig. 4 reveals that the spreading time 共defined
as the time taken by the droplet to spread to its maximum contact
area兲 is approximately 30 ␮s.
The subsequent contour shapes caused by the upward motion of
the droplet fluid indicate that the fraction of solidified mass is
small within the first cycle of the droplet oscillation. The large
variation of droplet height during the subsequent oscillation also
suggests that the damping effect of viscous force is less important
than the effect of surface tension force.
In the case of impact on a substrate with We⬎1, the radial
pressure gradient induced by the impact drives the process of
droplet spreading 共关6,32,5,33兴兲. Surface tension forces, liquid vis-
cous forces, and solidification work together to arrest the droplet
spreading. According to Bennett and Poulikakos 关32兴, surface ten-
sion effects dominate the termination of droplet spreading over
viscous effect when
WeⰆ2.8 Re0.457. (2)
For the droplet impingement conditions in Fig. 4, the right-hand
side of the above equation has a value of 42.3. Comparison with
Table 2 Initial conditions for the second series of experiments

focusing on the evolution of the wetting angle
v 0 (m/s) 2.35 2.31 1.49 1.51

T 2,0(°C) 145 59 65 119
Re 546 537 348 350
We 9.7 9.4 3.9 4.0
Ste 0.22 0.70 0.67 0.36
Fig. 5 Spreading, oscillations, and freezing of a solder droplet Oh 0.0057 0.0057 0.0057 0.0057
on a flat substrate. Initial conditions: v 0 Ä1.49 mÕs, d 0 Pr 0.025 0.025 0.025 0.025
Ä84 ␮ m, T 1,0Ä210°C, T 2,0Ä135°C.
Fig. 6 Time evolution of the spread factor ␤, with the substrate temperature T 2,0 as a parameter. The error
is estimated in Section 2.3.
the Weber number, about ten times smaller, indicates that the drop surface are due to a strong coupling between solidification
condition for the droplet deposition shown in Fig. 4 is well into and oscillations, which was suggested by numerical results per-
the surface tension domain concerning the relative influence of taining to a comparable parameter range 共关15,16兴兲.
viscous dissipation and surface tension. Solidification can influence the spreading. This occurs by freez-
Solidification effects can influence droplet motion 共关33兴兲. Ne- ing at the wetting line 共关35兴兲, or by destruction of kinetic energy
glecting the presence of contact thermal resistance between the by solidification 共关9兴兲. The parameter measuring the spreading is
substrate and the droplet bottom, the ratio of spreading time, t spr , the spread factor, ␤, defined as the ratio of the diameter d of the
to the solidification time, t s , can be estimated from 共关33兴兲 wetted substrate area over the initial droplet diameter d 0 . A com-
parison between Figs. 4 and 5 shows a significant increase of the
t spr /t s ⫽OhSte/Pr. (3) maximum spread factor ␤ max when the substrate temperature is
The ratio calculated from the above equation is 0.17, indicating increased to 135°C. Assuming heat transfer between the substrate
that the droplet spreading time is smaller than the solidification and the droplet only affects the spreading by delaying the solidi-
time. It is expected that the above ratio will be further reduced in fication start 共关6,33兴兲, the increase of ␤ max with increasing sub-
the presence of interface thermal contact resistance. According to strate temperature shows that solidification influences the
Fig. 4, the spreading time is approximately 30 ␮s before the re- spreading.
coiling motion in the liquid region. No changes of the droplet Other effects caused by an increase in the substrate temperature
shape are visible for the points located at the top of the droplet are visible in comparing Figs. 4 and 5. The final height decreases
contour after 255 ␮s. Assuming that the arrest of droplet oscilla- and ripples are no longer visible: the droplet assumes a lens shape.
tory motion is caused by solidification and not by viscous damp- These and other phenomena are discussed in the next section,
ing 共which is reasonable since four visible ripples on the drop which considers measurements from pictures of droplet spreading
surface indicate that solidification arrested most of the drop mo- for increasing initial substrate temperatures.
tion兲, the ratio of the measured droplet spreading time to solidifi-
cation time is 0.12. This agrees relatively well with the prediction 3.3 Quantitative Investigation of the Spreading and Solidi-
of Eq. 共3兲. fication Process. The time evolution of the spread factor ␤,
While droplet solidification is significantly slower than droplet measured as in Fig. 3, is shown in Fig. 6 with the substrate initial
spreading as shown above, it is also obvious that the subsequent temperature T 2,0 as a parameter. The time resolution is 5 ␮s. In the
oscillatory motion of the droplet is strongly affected by solidifi- first 15 ␮s after impact, ␤ increases from 0 to about 1 in a similar
cation. First, it can be shown by counting the number of frames way for all values of T 2,0 examined. However, the attained final
for each oscillatory cycle that the oscillation frequency is in- values ␤ ⬁ depend markedly on T 2,0 . These final values increase
creased with the upward propagation of the droplet solidification with substrate temperature for T 2,0 between 48 and 98°C, and are
front, which reduces the total liquid mass of the droplet. Numeri- almost constant for higher temperatures. The dynamic nondimen-
cal simulations suggested that the oscillation frequency of an im- sional parameters of impact, including We, Re, and Oh numbers,
pacting droplet is closely related to the droplet natural frequency are approximately the same in every case. The difference is the
共关34兴兲 thermodynamic parameter for phase change, the Stefan number,
calculated in Table 1. The similar behavior of ␤ (t) for T 2,0 in the
f ⬀ 共 ␴ / ␳ l V l 兲 1/2 (4)
range 98 to 135°C indicates that above 98°C 共i.e., below Ste
where V l is the liquid volume. As the solidification front propa- ⫽0.48兲, there is no dependency of ␤ on the Stefan number. This
gates into the molten region, the remaining liquid mass of the implies that solidification does not influence the spreading for T 2,0
droplet decreases, which results in an increase of the oscillation over 98°C. Therefore, the assumption that the droplet spreads first
frequency. Second, Fig. 4 confirms that the ripples visible on the and solidifies subsequently appears to be valid in this range of
Fig. 7 Time evolution of the dimensionless visible droplet height over the substrate H , with the substrate
temperature T 2,0 as a parameter. The error is estimated in Section 2.3.
T 2,0 . This is indicated by the good agreement between the final splat and substrate in Fig. 4 共30 ␮s兲, which makes the accurate
spread factor we measured for T 2,0 above 98°C ( ␤ ⬇1.6) and measurement of the maximum spread factor difficult.
results from an analytical relation of Pasandideh-Fard et al. 关36兴. Figure 7 shows the time evolution of the dimensionless visible
This relation estimates the maximum spread factor in the absence droplet height H over the substrate 共defined in Fig. 3 as the maxi-
of solidification to be 1.65 with our mean values of Re, We, and mum height when viewing from the side at any time instance兲,
with an advancing wetting angle value of 135 deg in the early with T 2,0 as a parameter. It should be emphasized that the visible
stages of spreading. It is worth noting that the above analytical droplet height does not always correspond to the height of the
relation is based on the assumption of a reasonably high Reynolds intersection of the axis of symmetry with the free surface. For
number, so as to produce a thin boundary layer in the liquid as it example, simulations by Waldvogel and Poulikakos 关15兴 have
spreads, which is only partially valid in our case (Re⫽381). We shown that, in the early stages of the spreading, the height of the
found it interesting that this relation predicts within five percent intersection of the axis of symmetry with the free surface is
the spreading ratio of our measurements in the absence of solidi- smaller than the droplet height visible from the side. The motion
fication 共i.e., when the substrate initial temperature is high兲. This of the droplet height shown in Fig. 7 can be termed as a damped
is why we have tested the extension of this relation 共关9兴兲 that oscillation. Figure 8 shows the final, maximum and minimum val-
considers solidification effects by assuming that the influence of ues of the visible droplet height, each corresponding to a fixed
solidification is manifested by kinetic energy destruction. In this
case, the model results do not agree well with our experimental
results. The calculated maximum spread factors lie between 1.52
and 1.57, and our experimental values are between 1.20 and 1.69.
One possible reason for this discrepancy could be that solidifica-
tion influences the spreading by arresting the wetting line via
freezing rather than by destroying kinetic energy. In a published
numerical study pertaining to the same parameter range as this
experimental study, Waldvogel and Poulikakos 关15兴 have shown
that freezing at the wetting line controls wetting line arrest. This
has also been observed experimentally by Schiaffino and Sonin
关35兴 for low Weber numbers. However, the history of the spread
factor ␤ for the lowest substrate temperature T 2,0⫽48°C 共Fig. 6兲
shows a maximum value of ␤ significantly bigger 共eight percent兲
than the final value of ␤. This measurement, concerning the high-
est Stefan number 共0.77兲 of our measurement range, would con-
tradict the hypothesis that freezing at the wetting line controls the Fig. 8 Final, maximum and minimum droplet nondimensional
maximum spreading. This apparent contradiction is probably a visible height H as a function of T 2,0 . The error is estimated in
consequence of the significant blurring at the contact between Section 2.3.
Fig. 9 Solidification time t s as a function of T 2,0 . The experi-
mental values refer to the apparent solidification time, and the
order of magnitude values refer to Eqs. „5… to „8….
substrate temperature. The maximum visible height is measured

from the beginning of first recoiling, and the final visible height is
measured by averaging the height of the ten last frames of each
visualization series. The final maximum and minimum values of
the visible droplet height decrease monotonically with T 2,0 . At
temperatures below 98°C, the monotonical decrease of final
height with substrate temperature can be correlated with the in-
crease of ␤ max with substrate temperature 共Fig. 6兲.
Quantitative information about the solidification time has been
extracted from Fig. 7 as follows. We assume that the droplet is
frozen when the droplet height remains constant 共within ⫾2 per-
cent of the initial diameter兲 for a time length more than half a Fig. 10 Determination of the apparent dynamic wetting
period of its oscillations 共corresponding to a series of ten succes- angles. Angle ␣ L is determined by points „I,G,A…, and angle ␣ R
sive frames兲. The apparent solidification time is then defined ar- by „H,A,G…. The measurement incertitude ␦ ␣ R comes primarily
bitrarily as the time of the first frame of the above mentioned from the positioning of A and H, its value is estimated ¿ÕÀ12
deg.
series. The apparent solidification time is represented in Fig. 9. It
depends nonmonotonically on T 2,0 , with a minimum of about 165
␮s at T 2,0⫽98°C. This nonmonotonic dependence of the apparent
solidification time on T 2,0 indicates a nonmonotonic dependence worth noting that h e expresses both the effects of convection in
of the effective solidification time on T 2,0 , as calculated in previ- the liquid part of the splat and conductive heat transfer at the
ous numerical simulations 共关15,16兴兲. An order of magnitude ex- splat/substrate interface. These two heat transfer modes have been
planation of this nonmonotonic dependence of the solidification respectively examined by 共关37兴兲 and 共关10兴兲 matching experiments
time on T 2,0 is presented hereafter. If we neglect the effect of with numerical or analytical models. Although the goal of our
superheat and subcooling, we can consider that the energy E s analytical model is to give a physical explanation of the observed
released by the solidification of the droplet is constant with re- non-monotonic dependence of the solidification time on T 2,0 and
spect to T 2,0 : not to provide quantitative results, the estimated value of h e
E s ⫽ ␳ VL. (5) agrees in an order of magnitude sense with the results of 共关10兴兲.
The effect of thermal contact resistance on the spreading dynam-
The solidificaiton time t s is expressed as follows: ics cannot be accurately pursued with the present approximate
Es model. A thorough study of this effect has been performed by
t s⫽ . (6) Xiong et al. 关16兴, who matched the shapes of solidified droplets
q̇ with the shapes obtained by numerical simulations at different
We also assume that the heat flux q̇ can be expressed by Biot numbers.
q̇⫽h e S 共 T m ⫺T 2,0兲 (7) 3.4 Investigation of the Wetting Dynamics. The visualiza-
tion method presented here allows the measurement of the evolu-
where h e is an effective heat transfer coefficient and
tion of the apparent wetting angle ␣. This angle is always mea-
␲ 2 2 sured at the contact line between the droplet and the wafer
S⫽ d ␤ (8) substrate, as shown in Fig. 10, which is a representative frame for
4 0 ⬁
our wetting measurements. Each frame allows a double measure-
is the contact surface between splat and droplet 共the final spread ment of ␣, on the left and on the right of the droplet. A graphical
factor ␤ ⬁ is measured from Fig. 6兲. The variation of the solidifi- estimate in Fig. 10 yields an angular precision of ⫾12 deg. It is
cation time t s therefore only depends on q̇, i.e., on the product of worth noting that ␣ can only be considered to be a wetting angle
S 共increasing with T 2,0兲 and the temperature difference 共decreasing as long as no solidification has occurred at the contact line. Indi-
with increasing T 2,0兲. The coupling of these two opposite trends cators of the fact that solidification has not occurred are for ex-
leads to a minimum in the solidification time. Values of the so- ample the temporal evolution of the spread factor and the tempo-
lidification time calculated by this order of magnitude model de- ral variation of the apparent wetting angle. The experimental
scribed above are plotted in Fig. 9. The value of the effective heat conditions for the experiments on wetting dynamics are slightly
transfer coefficient used in Eq. 共7兲 (h e ⫽4.3* 105 (Wm⫺2 K⫺1)) different from the first series of experiments performed in this
has been determined by minimizing the differences between the study, as described above. The time resolution of 300 ns used is
model and the experiments results, in a least square sense. It is well below the jitter due to instabilities in droplet ejection, so we
Fig. 11 Evolution of the wetting angle ␣ as a function of the spread factor ␤ for the specified initial
substrate temperatures T 2,0 and impact velocities v 0 . The angular error is estimated in Fig. 10.
have selected to base our interpretation of the results on plots of combination of a plateau and a small zone of increase and subse-
the wetting angle as a function of the spread factor ␤ 共Fig. 11兲 quent decrease of ␣ for ␤ 苸关 1.1,1.3兴 . It is worth stressing that,
instead of as a function of time 共Fig. 12兲. although not explicitly extractable from Fig. 11 because time is
Figure 11 shows the evolution of the apparent wetting angle ␣ not a coordinate, oscillations of the value of ␣ at the maximum
as a function of the spread factor ␤ for the four cases described in values of ␤ 共for example ␤ ⫽1.6 and ␤ ⫽1.8兲 were observed. Wit-
Table 2. These cases differ by the impact velocity v 0 and the ness to this fact are the frames between 45 and 150 ␮s in Fig. 5.
initial substrate temperature T 2,0 . At least two regimes can be The results for ␣ in the first regime can be interpreted as fol-
distinguished in Fig. 11: a first regime where ␣ decreases linearly lows. The decrease of the apparent wetting angle value with the
( ␤ ⬍0.8), and where the behavior is comparable in the four mea- spread factor corresponds qualitatively to the predictions of Hoff-
surement sequences, and a second regime ( ␤ ⬎0.8), where no man’s experimental correlation 共关12,13兴兲, which expresses that the
consistent behavior for all cases can be observed. In the first re- wetting angle decreases with decreasing capillary numbers 共this is
gime, measurements and a general optical inspection of the frames the case in the early part of the impact, because the spherical
do not reveal significant angle and shape differences between the droplet shape induces a contact line velocity that decreases with
four examined cases, defined by their respective initial impact time兲:
velocities v 0 and surface temperature T 2,0 : 共2.35,145兲, 共2.31, 59兲, ⫺1
共1.51, 119兲 and 共1.49 m/s, 65°C兲. A linear curve fit in this first ␣ ⫽ f Hoff共 Ca⫹ f Hoff共 ␣ eq 兲兲 (10)
regime yields the following correlation, plotted in Fig. 11:
f Hoff共 Ca兲 ⫽4.54Ca 0.353
, Ca⬍O 共 0.1兲 . (11)
␣ 共 ␤ 兲 ⫽160 deg⫺71␤ , ␤ ⬍0.8. (9)
The second term in the parenthesis of Eq. 共10兲 is a correction
The second regime can be either a horizontal plateau ( ␣ factor for the influence of the equilibrium wetting angle ␣ eq .
⬃90 deg) terminated by a region where the value of ␣ oscillates Theoretical verification of Hoffman’s correlation has been ob-
at the maximum value of ␤ as in the case 共1.51, 119兲, or a regime tained for the case of perfect wetting ( ␣ eq ⫽0) via hydrodynamic
of increase and subsequent decrease of ␣ as in the cases 共2.31, 59兲 analyses by Voinov and Tanner 关38,39兴. Equation 共11兲 expresses
and 共1.49, 65兲, where ␣ first increases to a local maximum and this correlation for the range of capillary number that pertains to
then decreases to a final value of about 90 deg 共the interpretation our study 关40兴.
of the results in Fig. 11 is aided by plots such as Fig. 12, where Hoffman suggested analytically that flow inertia could influ-
time is a coordinate兲. The last case 共2.35, 145兲 can be viewed as a ence ␣ for We⬎0.015 共关13兴兲. The analyses of Tanner and Voinov
Fig. 12 Time evolution of the spread factor ␤, the contact angle ␣, the first ripple angle ␥, and the
first ripple nondimensional height H 11 in the case „v 0 Ä2.31 mÕs, T 2,0Ä59°C…. The error is estimated
in Section 2.3 and in Fig. 10.
focused on the slow viscous flow regime, neglecting flow inertia solidified solder droplet 共80 ␮m diameter兲 and heated the slide at
in the Navier-Stokes equations. Publications can be found stating 180°C during two minutes. Frames 共a兲 and 共b兲 in Fig. 13 are top
that inertia effects on the wetting angle can be ignored for Ca views of the droplet respectively before 共at solid state兲 and at the
⭐O(0.1), without commenting on the influence of the Weber end of the heating. The drastic increase of diameter of the drop
number 共关40兴兲. However, most of these wetting studies are per- during melting indicates that the melting drop wets the substrate
formed with high viscosity oils. In the first regime of the droplet very well creating a film-like structure, corresponding to a small
spreading observed in this study, the measured contact line veloci-
equilibrium wetting angle. We used atomic force microscopy
ties of 2–4 m/s correspond to Ca of the order of
共AFM兲 in order to quantify the wetting angle value as follows.
1.5* 10⫺2 – 3.2* 10⫺2 , and simultaneously to We of the order of 7
to 28. These moderate Weber number clearly implies that the fluid The slide was removed from the heater right after heating and
inertia is not negligible in comparison with capillary forces. This cooled on a steel surface at ambient temperature in order to freeze
indicates the existence of situations where inertia is not negligible the equilibrium wetting angle. It is worth noting that AFM mea-
even at low Ca, for example in the case of low viscosity materials surements of a liquid surface, in particular of a contact line region
such as liquid metals. at relatively high temperatures are not very reliable and difficult to
A second limitation of Hoffman’s correlation and of its hydro- perform since AFM has been developed for solid surfaces. Imple-
dynamic justifications is that they are expressed for steady flows mentation in liquid and molten interfaces measurements is at best
only. Therefore, the application of Hoffman’s correlation to an at its infancy 共关41兴兲. The measured values of the frozen contact
unsteady droplet impact is questionable. However, since Hoff- angle, from the border of the contact line up to nine microns from
man’s correlation is the only widely known available general wet- that line, were smaller than 30 deg 共Fig. 13兲. Even if the equilib-
ting correlation, it is worth comparing it with our measurements. rium angle were 40 deg, the dynamic angles values calculated
Quantitatively, it is difficult to compare the evolution of ␣ with with Hoffman’s correlation would only slightly increase 共respec-
the evolution of the capillary number in this first regime since the
tively from 59 deg to 65 deg and from 77 deg to 81 deg as
equilibrium wetting angle is a prior unknown, and since we only
measured an average velocity at the contact line, meaning an av- discussed earlier兲, which still does not agree with the measured
erage Ca. Assuming an equilibrium wetting angle near zero, these values that all lie between 90 deg and 140 deg. The fact that a
values of Ca of 1.5* 10⫺2 and 3.2* 10⫺2 correspond via Eqs. single correlation Eq. 共9兲 could be extracted from impacts with
共10兲–共11兲 to wetting angles of, respectively, 59 deg and 77 deg. different velocities 共Fig. 11兲 also suggests that Hoffman’s corre-
The assumption of a small equilibrium wetting angle value has lation is not valid in the first part of the curve describing our
been confirmed to some extent in this study experimentally. To measurements. Since Hoffman’s correlation does not account for
this end, we placed on a microheater a wafer slide supporting a the bulk fluid inertia and the influence of the free surface shape in
Fig. 13 Contact angle measurement with atomic force microscopy. The two vertical
lines determine the position of the angle measurement on the splat profile. Frames „a…
and „b… show the top view of the same „previously solidified… drop before „a… and after
two minutes heating „b… above its melting temperature „180°C….
the vicinity of the contact line, further measurements had to be mately constant at 90 deg for ␤ ⬎1, while the characteristic point
performed in order to consider the influence of these phenomena describing the location of the first ripple falls on the contact line.
on droplet spreading. This absence of bending of the free surface near the substrate
The influence of the free surface motion near the wetting angle could be explained by an impact velocity lower than in the case
on this same angle can be examined by tracking the position of the 共2.35, 145兲.
first free surface ripple relative to the contact line. A characteristic We also attempted to test Hoffman’s correlation in the second
free surface point describing the location of the first ripple is the regime for both our high substrate temperature cases. Contact line
lowest point above the substrate where the horizontal cross sec- velocities were estimated to be 1.44 m/s and 0.84 m/s for the cases
tion of the droplet reaches a local maximum, represented by point 共2.35 m/s, 145°C兲 and 共1.51, 119兲, respectively, in the ranges of
B 共or F兲 in Fig. 3 共this point can fall on the contact line, e.g., when ␤ 苸(1.4,1.8) and 共1.2, 1.6兲. These velocities correspond to Ca of
the drop has a meniscus shape兲. An indicator of the influence of 1.1* 10⫺2 and 6.3* 10⫺3 . The resulting wetting angle values ob-
the first ripple position on the contact angle ␣ is the angle ␥, tained from Hoffman’s correlation, assuming again an equilibrium
defined as the angle BAG 共or AGF兲 in Fig. 3. It is worth noting wetting angle of zero, are 53 and 43 deg, respectively. These
that ␥ cannot be defined when points B and A 共or F and G兲 values differ greatly from the measured values of about 90 deg. It
coincide. This ‘‘first ripple angle’’ ␥, when defined, is plotted in should be noted that this finding is not sensitive to the assumed
Fig. 12 as a function of time for the case 共2.31 m/s, 59°C兲. A clear value of the equilibrium wetting angle: even if the measured equi-
relation between ␣ and ␥ during this first part of the spreading is librium angle were 40 deg, the wetting angle predicted by Hoff-
obvious, and is also visible in the three other wetting angle mea- man’s correlation would be increased by less than 11 deg, which
surement sequences 共not plotted in Fig. 12 for clarity兲, as well as is far from sufficient to yield agreement with our measurements.
in the frames 2 and 3 of Fig. 5. The nondimensional height of the
first ripple above the substrate H 11 is also plotted in Fig. 12 in
order to determine unequivocally the position of the first ripple. 4 Conclusion
The second regime of the spreading ( ␤ ⬎0.8) allows a better To the best of our knowledge, this study presents the first ex-
insight into the relation between ␥ and ␣. In Fig. 12 these two perimental results on the transient fluid dynamics, wetting, and
angles values exhibit a coordinated increase and subsequent de- solidification of molten microdroplets impacting on a substrate,
crease for t苸关 15,30 ␮ s兴 . This indicates that the apparent wetting which are directly relevant to the novel solder jetting technology
angle and the bending of the free surface over it represented by ␥ in manufacturing of microelectronics. It was shown that the
are dependent. This makes sense physically, for example, when ripples on the solidified drop surface are due to a strong coupling
one considers the limit case where the contact line freezes sud- between flow oscillations and solidification, as was suggested by
denly and the first ripple continues to advance because of the bulk earlier numerical results pertaining to a comparable parameter
fluid flow, as in cases 共1.49 m/s, 65°C兲 and 共2.31, 59兲 in Fig. 11: range 共关15,16兴兲. The value of the substrate temperature was varied
Here the apparent ␣ will increase only because of the combination in order to study its influence on the spreading and solidification
between bulk fluid dynamics and heat transfer, and not because of process. Transient measurements of the droplet height above the
wetting phenomena. Frames 3–5 in Fig. 4 show a similar increase substrate have been carried out, showing a damped oscillation.
and subsequent decrease of the value of alpha, as in the measure- Our results suggest that the solidification time depends nonmono-
ment 共1.49, 65兲. It is worth noting that the apparent receding tonically on the substrate temperature. This finding, although ap-
observed in both low-temperature cases 共Fig. 6, Fig. 11, and Fig. pearing counterintuitive, is supported by a simple order of mag-
12兲 is not consistent with the fact that solidification arrests the nitude analysis. Transient measurements of the spread factor
spreading at low temperature. The exact reasons are not clear to us showed that the substrate temperature significantly affects the
at the present time. spreading for substrate temperatures ranging from 48°C to 98°C
Another increase and subsequent decrease of the value of ␣, 共Ste⫽0.77 to 0.48兲. This indicates that spreading is arrested by
smaller than in both low-temperature cases, is also observed in solidification at the wetting line. At higher temperatures, the
Fig. 11 in one high temperature case 共2.35, 145兲. This can also be spread factor was practically independent of the substrate tem-
correlated with a bending of the free surface above the substrate perature. Measurements of the wetting angle for different condi-
and a corresponding increase of ␥. Contrary to both low- tions of impact velocities and substrate temperature have also
temperature cases, this bending is probably caused by the bulk been carried out. It was established that the wetting angle dynam-
fluid motion instead of solidification, since the latter only affects ics is strongly coupled to the evolution of the droplet free surface
the motion of the contact line at a later stage. In the other high- and no quantitative agreement with Hoffman’s correlation was
temperature case 共1.51, 119兲 the wetting angle remains approxi- found. Two successive regimes during the spreading have been
distinguished. The influence of the initial conditions on the evo- Molten-Metal Droplets on Electronic Substrates,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer,
120, p. 539.
lution of the apparent wetting angle was analyzed in both regimes. 关5兴 Haferl, S., Zhao, Z., Giannakouros, J., Attinger, D., and Poulikakos, D., 2000,
‘‘Transport Phenomena in the Impact of a Molten Droplet on a Surface: Mac-
roscopic Phenomenology and Microscopic Considerations, Part I: Fluid Dy-
Acknowledgments namics,’’ Annu. Rev. Heat Transfer, C. L. Tien, ed.
关6兴 Attinger, D., Haferl, S., Zhao, Z., and Poulikakos, D., 2000, ‘‘Transport Phe-
This work has been partially supported by the Swiss National nomena in the Impact of a Molten Droplet on a Surface: Macroscopic Phe-
Science Foundation 共Grant No. 21-49183.96兲. The authors would nomenology and Microscopic Considerations, Part II—Heat Transfer and So-
like to acknowledge Stefan Haferl whose experience with atomic lidification,’’ Annu. Rev. Heat Transfer., C. L. Tien, ed., in press.
force microscopy and valuable advice were a great help for real- 关7兴 Amon, C. H., Schmaltz, K. C., Merz, R., and Prinz, F. B., 1996, ‘‘Numerical
and Experimental Investigation of Interface Bonding via Substrate Remelting
izing the measurement in Fig. 13.
of an Impinging Molten Metal Droplet,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 118, pp.
164–172.
关8兴 Bennett, T., and Poulikakos, D., 1994, ‘‘Heat Transfer Aspects of Splat-
Nomenclature Quench Solidification: Modeling and Experiment,’’ J. Mater. Sci., 29, pp.
Ca ⫽ capillary number ( ␮ v c ␴ ⫺1 ) 2025–2039.
关9兴
specific heat 共J kg⫺1 K⫺1兲
Pasandideh-Fard, M., Bohla, R., Chandra, S., and Mostaghimi, J., 1998,
cp ⫽ ‘‘Deposition of Tin Droplets on a Steel Plate: Simulations and Experiments,’’
d ⫽ diameter 共m兲 Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 41, No. 19, pp. 2929–2945.
E ⫽ energy 共J兲关10兴 Wang, G. X., and Matthys, E. F., 1996, ‘‘Experimental Investigation of Inter-
f ⫽ frequency 共s⫺1兲 facial Thermal Conductance for Molten Metal Solidification on a Substrate,’’
heat transfer coefficient 共Wm⫺2K⫺1兲
ASME J. Heat Transfer, 118, pp. 157–163.
h ⫽ 关11兴 Blake, T. D., and Haynes, J. M., 1969, ‘‘Kinetics of Liquid/Liquid Displace-
H ⫽ nondimensional height 共共visible height兲/d 0 兲 ment,’’ J. Colloid Interface Sci., 30, pp. 421–423.
L ⫽ latent heat 共J kg⫺1兲关12兴 Dussan, E. B., 1979, ‘‘On the Spreading of Liquids on Solid Surfaces: Static
Oh ⫽ Ohnesorge number 共共We兲1/2/Re兲 and Dynamic Contact Lines,’’ Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech., 11, pp. 371–400.
关13兴 Hoffman, R. L., 1975, ‘‘A Study of the Advancing Interface, I—Interface
Pr ⫽ Prandtl number ( ␮ c pl ␭ ⫺1
l ) Shape in Liquid-Gas Systems,’’ J. Colloid Interface Sci., 50, pp. 228–241.
q̇ ⫽ heat transfer rate 共W兲关14兴 Fukai, J., Shiba, Y., Yamamoto, T., Miyatake, O., Poulikakos, D., Megaridis,
Re ⫽ Reynolds number ( ␳ v 0 d 0 ␮ ⫺1 ) C. M., and Zhao, Z., 1995, ‘‘Wetting Effects on the Spreading of a Liquid
Droplet Colliding With a Flat Surface: Experimental and Modeling,’’ Phys.
S ⫽ surface 共m2兲 Fluids, 7, No. 2, pp. 236–247.
Ste ⫽ Stefan number (c pl (T m ⫺T 2,0)L ⫺1 ) 关15兴 Waldvogel, J. M., and Poulikakos, D., 1997, ‘‘Solidification Phenomena in
t ⫽ time共s兲 Picoliter Size Solder Droplet Deposition on a Composite Substrate,’’ Int. J.
T ⫽ temperature 共K兲 Heat Mass Transf., 40, No. 2, pp. 295–309.
关16兴 Xiong, B., Magaridis, C. M., Poulikakos, D., and Hoang, H., 1998, ‘‘An In-
V ⫽ volume 共m3兲 vestigation of Key Factors Affecting Solder Microdroplet Deposition,’’ ASME
v ⫽ velocity 共m s⫺1兲 J. Heat Transfer, 120, pp. 259–270.
We ⫽ Weber number ( ␳ v 20 d 0 ␴ ⫺1 ) 关17兴 Inada, S., Miyasaka, Y., Mishida, K., and Chandratilleke, G. R., 1983, ‘‘Tran-
sient Temperature Variation of a Hot Wall due to an Impinging Water Drop:
Greek Symbols Effect of Subcooling of the Water Drop,’’ Proceedings of the Joint ASME/
JSME Thermal Engineering Conference, Vol. 1, ASME, New York, pp. 173–
␣ ⫽ apparent wetting angle 182.
␤ ⫽ spread factor 关18兴 Pederson, C. O., 1970, ‘‘An Experimental Study of the Dynamic Behavior and
␥ ⫽ first ripple angle Heat Transfer Characteristics of Water Droplets Impinging Upon a Heated
Surface,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 13, pp. 369–381.
⌬ ⫽ difference 关19兴 Savic, P., and Boult, G. T., 1955, ‘‘The Fluid Flow Associated With the
␭ ⫽ thermal conductivity 共Wm⫺1K⫺1兲 Impact of Liquid Drops With Solid Surfaces,’’ Report No. MT-26, Nat. Res.
␮ ⫽ dynamic viscosity 共Pa s兲 Council Canada.
␳ ⫽ density 共kg m⫺3兲关20兴 Toda, S., 1974, ‘‘A Study of Mist Cooling’’ 共2nd Report: Theory of Mist
␴ ⫽ surface energy 共Jm⫺2兲 Cooling and Its Fundamental Experiments兲, Heat Transfer Japan. Res., 3, No.
1, pp. 1–44.
Subscripts 关21兴 Ueda, T., Enomoto, T., and Kanetsuki, M., 1979, ‘‘Heat Transfer Character-
istics and Dynamic Behavior of Saturated Droplets Impinging on a Heated
0 ⫽ initial Vertical Surface,’’ Bull. JSME, 22, No. 167, pp. 724–732.
1 ⫽ droplet 关22兴 Chandra, S., and Avedisian, C. T., 1991, ‘‘On the Collision of a Droplet With
a Solid Surface,’’ Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 432, pp. 13–41.
2 ⫽ substrate top surface 关23兴 Stow, C. D., and Hadfield, M. G., 1981, ‘‘An Experimental Investigation of
3 ⫽ substrate bottom surface Fluid Flow Resulting From the Impact of a Water Drop With an Unyielding
11 ⫽ first ripple Dry Surface,’’ Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 373, pp. 419–441.
c ⫽ contact line 关24兴 Wachters, L. H., and Westerling, N. A. J., 1966, ‘‘The Heat Transfer From a
Hot Wall to Impinging Water Drop in the Spherical State,’’ Chem. Eng. Sci.,
e ⫽ effective 21, pp. 1047–1056.
eq ⫽ equilibrium 关25兴 Mundo, C., Sommerfeld, M., and Tropea, C., 1995, ‘‘Droplet-Wall Collisions:
l ⫽ liquid Experimental Studies of the Deformation and Breakup Process,’’ Int. J. Mul-
m ⫽ melting point tiphase Flow, 21, pp. 151–173.
关26兴 Yarin, A. L., and Weiss, D. A., 1995, ‘‘Impact of Drops on Solid Surfaces:
max ⫽ maximum Self-Similar Capillary Waves and Splashing as a New Type of Kinematic
s ⫽ solid, solidification Discontinuity,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 283, pp. 141–173.
spr ⫽ spreading 关27兴 Ohl, C. D., Philipp, A., and Lauterborn, W., 1995, ‘‘Cavitation Bubble Col-
⬁ ⫽ final, arrested lapse Studies at 20 Million Frames Per Second,’’ Ann. Phys. 共Leipzig兲, 4, No.
1, pp. 26–34.
关28兴 Levin, Z., and Hobbs, P. V., 1971, ‘‘Splashing of Water Drops on Solid and
Wetted Surfaces: Hydrodynamics and Charge Separations,’’ Philos. Trans. R.
References Soc. London, Ser. A, 269, pp. 555–585.
关1兴 Orme, M., 1993, ‘‘A Novel Technique of Rapid Solidification Net-Form Ma- 关29兴 Hayes, D. J., Wallace, D. B., and Boldman, M. T., 1992, ‘‘Picoliter Solder
terials Synthesis,’’ J. Mater. Eng. Perform., 2, No. 3, pp. 399–405. Droplet Dispension,’’ ISHM Symposium 92 Proceedings, pp. 316–321.
关2兴 Orme, M., Huang, C., and Courter, J., 1996, ‘‘Deposition Strategies for Con- 关30兴 Arx, M. v., 1998, ‘‘Thermal Properties of CMOS Thin Films,’’ Ph.D. thesis,
trol of Microstructures Microporosity and Surface Roughness in Droplet- ETH Zurich.
Based Solid Freeform Fabrication of Structural Materials,’’ Melt Spinning, 关31兴 Poulikakos, D., 1994, Conduction Heat Transfer, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Strip Casting and Slab Casting, Matthys, E. F., and Truckner, W. G., eds., The Cliffs, NJ.
Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, Warrendale, PA, pp. 125–143. 关32兴 Bennett, T., and Poulikakos, D., 1993, ‘‘Splat-Quench Solidification: Estimat-
关3兴 Hayes, D. J., and Wallace, D. B., 1998, ‘‘Solder Jet Printing: Wafer Bumping ing the Maximum Spreading of a Droplet Impacting a Solid Surface,’’ J.
and CSP Applications,’’ Chip Scale Rev., 2, No. 4, pp. 75–80. Mater. Sci., 28, pp. 963–970.
关4兴 Waldvogel, J. M., Diversiev, G., Poulikakos, D., Megaridis, C. M., Attinger, 关33兴 Schiaffino, S., and Sonin, A. A., 1997, ‘‘Molten Droplet Deposition and So-
D., Xiong, B., and Wallace, D. B., 1998, ‘‘Impact and Solidification of lidification at Low Weber Numbers,’’ Phys. Fluids, 9, pp. 3172–3187.
关34兴 Fukai, J., Zhao, Z., Poulikakos, D., Megaridis, C. M., and Miyatake, O., 1993, 关38兴 Tanner, L. H., 1979, ‘‘The Spreading of Silicon Oil Drops on Horizontal
‘‘Modeling of the Deformation of a Liquid Droplet Impinging Upon a Flat Surfaces,’’ J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 12, pp. 1473–1484.
Surface,’’ Phys. Fluids A, 5, pp. 2588–2599. 关39兴 Voinov, O. V., 1976, ‘‘Hydrodynamics of Wetting,’’ Fluid Dyn., 11, pp. 714–
关35兴 Schiaffino, S., and Sonin, A. A., 1997, ‘‘Motion and Arrest of a Molten Con- 721.
tact Line on a Cold Surface: An Experimental Study,’’ Phys. Fluids, 9, pp. 关40兴 Kistler, S. F., 1993, ‘‘Hydrodynamics of Wetting,’’ Wettability, Berg, J. C.,
2217–2226. ed., Marcel Dekker, New York.
关41兴 Haferl, S., Poulikakos, D., and Zhao, Z., 1999, ‘‘Employing Scanning Force
关36兴 Pasandideh-Fard, M., Qiao, Y. M., Chandra, S., and Mostaghimi, J., 1996,
Microscopy to Investigate the Dynamic Wetting Behavior of Liquid Micro-
‘‘Capillary Effects During Droplet Impact on a Solid Surface,’’ Phys. Fluids,
droplets on Smooth Surfaces: Gathered Experiences,’’ Poster Presentation, Eu-
8, pp. S650–S659. ropean Research Conferences 共EURESCO兲 Solid/Fluid Interfaces: Complex
关37兴 Zarzalejo, L. J., Schmaltz, K. S., and Amon, C. H., 1999, ‘‘Molten Droplet Fluid Interfaces, Castelvecchio Pascoli, Italy.
Solidification and Substrate Remelting in Microcasting, Part I—Numerical 关42兴 Waldvogel, J. M., Poulikakos, D., Wallace, D. B., and Marusak, R., 1996,
Modeling and Experimental Varification,’’ Heat Mass Transfer, 34, pp. 477– ‘‘Transport Phenomena in Picoliter Size Solder Droplet Dispension,’’ ASME
485. J. Heat Transfer, 118, pp. 148–156.
Forced Convection in High
Porosity Metal Foams
This paper reports an experimental and numerical study of forced convection in high
V. V. Calmidi1 porosity (␧⬃0.89–0.97) metal foams. Experiments have been conducted with aluminum
metal foams in a variety of porosities and pore densities using air as the fluid medium.
R. L. Mahajan Nusselt number data has been obtained as a function of the pore Reynolds number. In the
numerical study, a semi-empirical volume-averaged form of the governing equations is
CAMPmode, used. The velocity profile is obtained by adapting an exact solution to the momentum
Department of Mechanical Engineering, equation. The energy transport is modeled without invoking the assumption of local
University of Colorado at Boulder, thermal equilibrium. Models for the thermal dispersion conductivity, k d , and the inter-
Boulder, CO 80309-0427 stitial heat transfer coefficient, h s f , are postulated based on physical arguments. The
empirical constants in these models are determined by matching the numerical results
with the experimental data obtained in this study as well as those in the open literature.
Excellent agreement is achieved in the entire range of the parameters studied, indicating
that the proposed treatment is sufficient to model forced convection in metal foams for
most practical applications. 关S0022-1481共00兲01903-4兴
Keywords: Convection, Experimental, Heat Transfer, Porous Media, Thermal
Introduction in which the medium has a distinct but continuous and rigid solid
phase, and a fluid phase. They are typically available in high
Forced and buoyancy-induced convection in porous media have
porosities 共␧⬎0.9兲. They also have a unique open-celled structure.
been studied extensively for over 50 years 共see Kaviany 关1兴 for a
As a result, most of the past studies on packed beds, and granular
good review on the subject兲. However, most studies in this cat-
porous media are not applicable to metal foams. There is thus a
egory have been restricted to packed beds and granular materials,
need to develop a fundamental understanding of the transport phe-
since they have direct application to naturally occurring porous
media, with porosities in the range 0.4–0.6. As discussed below, nomena in these foams. As shown later in this paper, both numeri-
there are relatively few investigations of transport phenomena in cal and experimental studies are currently needed to generate heat
very high porosity media 共␧⬎0.9兲 such as metal foams. transfer information for practical applications.
Only during the last ten years, transport phenomena in metal Energy transport in porous media has generally been studied
foams have started to receive attention 共关2–6兴兲. Hunt and Tien 关2兴 with the assumption of local thermal equilibrium among the two
studied forced convection in metal foams with water as the fluid phases. That is, a single homogeneous equation is used to describe
phase. Using the technique of volume averaging, and under the transport with the assumption that the solid and fluid phases have
simplifying assumption of local thermal equilibrium, they showed the same temperature field. Following such an assumption, the
that a single energy equation could adequately describe forced effective stagnant thermal conductivity, k e , of a porous medium
convection in metal foams. Sathe et al. 关3兴 studied combustion in is used to account for the solid and fluid phase conductivities. The
metal foams as applied to porous radiant burners. Lee et al. 关4兴 stagnant conductivity k e , is sometimes augmented by the disper-
studied the application of metal foams as high-performance air- sion conductivity, k d . Dispersion is a hydrodynamic phenomenon
cooled heat sinks in electronics packaging. In their experimental which becomes prominent at high Reynolds numbers, especially if
study, they demonstrated that a 1 cm2 chip dissipating 100 W k e is small in magnitude. Several empirical and analytical studies
could be cooled using an aluminum foam heat sink, and a low- have attempted to quantify dispersion in porous and fibrous media
power muffin fan. Recently, Calmidi and Mahajan 关5兴 addressed 共关2,7–9兴兲. The general conclusion is that at high Peclet numbers,
heat conduction in aluminum metal foams. They obtained experi- k d is linearly proportional to the local flow velocity.
mental data and developed an analytical model for the thermal Under certain situations, however, the assumption of local ther-
conductivity, taking into account the open-celled structure of mal equilibrium has to be relaxed. Such a condition might arise
metal foams. Bhattacharya et al. 关6兴 extended that work to cover a when there is internal heat generation 共关3兴兲 or when the difference
wider range of solid to fluid conductivity ratios. Further, the ana- in the stagnant conductivities of the solid and the fluid phases is
lytical model was refined to address issues of isotropicity. significant. The latter situation is encountered when metal foams
Our review suggests that there are no thermal transport studies are used with low-conductivity fluids like air or water. With local
in the literature 共pertaining to high porosity metal foams兲 that 共a兲 thermal nonequilibrium, the solid and fluid temperature fields
employ experimentally validated thermal conductivity data, 共b兲 have to be obtained separately. In addition, appropriate coupling
consider local thermal nonequilibrium among phases, and 共c兲 ac- is necessary between the solid and fluid phase energy equations to
curately consider metal foam microstructure. The focus of this account for the interfacial heat transfer.
paper is to take these factors into account. The focus of this study is forced convection in metal foams.
Metal foams 共Fig. 1兲 can be broadly classified as porous media First, the experimental method used to obtain Nusselt number data
for a number of aluminum metal foam samples with air as the
1
To whom correspondence should be addressed. Currently at the Advanced Ther- fluid medium is described. Following a discussion of the appro-
mal Engineering Laboratory, IBM Microelectronics, 1701 North Street, Endicott, NY priate form of the governing equations of momentum and energy
13760.
in metal foams, the details on the numerical method used to solve
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, May 17, them are provided. Finally, the numerical results are compared
1999; revision received, Feb. 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: R. Douglass. with the experimental data to obtain values of empirical constants
glass tube to a fan/motor assembly 共not shown in figure兲 down-
stream of the test sample. The direction of air flow is from left to
right as shown in Fig. 2. Very low conductivity styrofoam was
used to block the space around the sample to fully prevent flow
bypass. A pressure transducer was used to measure the pressure
drop across the metal foam sample. An orifice plate was used to
measure the flow rate through the metal foam sample.
The metal foam samples were brazed to 9.5-mm thick alumi-
num skins on two sides. On one of the skins, grooves were cut to
isolate a section of the metal foam. Patch heaters were fixed to
this isolated portion of the skin between the grooves 共Fig. 3兲. The
resulting physical dimensions of the heated section of the metal
foam are 63 mm⫻45 mm⫻114 mm. The grooves in the skin were
loosely filled with insulating material to prevent conduction losses
from the heated to the unheated sections. Then, two thin 共2-mm兲
Fig. 1 Picture of a typical metal foam sample grooves were cut in the metal foam below the grooves on the skin
共Fig. 3兲. This was done to prevent back-conduction of heat from
the heated to the unheated sections. This isolating scheme ensures
in the thermal dispersion and the interfacial heat transfer coeffi- that fully developed flow enters the heated section of the metal
cient models. foam 共Calmidi 关10兴兲. Six 36-gage T-type thermocouples 共axial
thermocouples兲 were fixed along axial locations in the skin as
Experiment shown in Fig. 3. For some samples, two thermocouples were fixed
A schematic of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2. Alu- at off-center locations 共25 mm from the center兲. Two additional
minum metal 共alloy T-6201兲 foam samples of size 63 mm⫻45 thermocouples were used to monitor the ambient temperature and
mm⫻196 mm were used in the experiments. Table 1 lists the the temperature of the air at the midplane before it entered the
characteristics of the samples that were used in the experiment. heated section. The total flow rate was estimated according to
The porosity is the void volume fraction and the pore density is ASME/ISO-5167-1:1991 using the pressure drop across the ori-
the number of pores per unit length of the material 共PPl, pores per fice plate as well as the temperature and pressure of the air enter-
inch兲 and, d f and d p are the average fiber diameter and pore ing the orifice plate. The average velocity 共superficial兲 of air flow-
diameter, respectively. The porosity of each sample was estimated ing through the metal foam, u o , is then the average flow rate
using the weight of a given volume of the sample and the density divided by the area of cross section.
of aluminum alloy T-6201. The fiber diameter, d f , was measured During a typical experiment run, the speed of the motor was
using a microscope, and the pore diameter, d p , was estimated by adjusted such that the flow velocity was set at a desired value. The
counting the number of pores in a given length of material. Both power input to the patch heaters was set between 15–35 W. The
d f and d p are average values. The pore density 共PPI兲 is a nominal temperature readings indicated by the thermocouples were moni-
value supplied by the manufacturer. tored until they reached steady state. This took approximately
For each experimental run, a metal foam sample was placed in 5–10 minutes depending on the flow velocity. It typically took
a plexiglass tube. Air flow was achieved by connecting the plexi- longer at lower flow velocities. The temperatures were monitored
for an additional interval of five minutes to ensure that steady
state had indeed been reached. Steady state was assumed if the
temperature did not vary more than 0.1°C during a five-minute
interval. The temperature readings of all the thermocouples with
respect to the ambient temperature were noted. The temperature
variation along the axis 共x-direction兲 was within 15 percent of the
average value, while the temperature variation perpendicular to
the axis 共z-direction兲 was less than 0.1°C in all the experimental
runs. The air temperature before it entered the heated section
(T in ) was also measured. It was slightly higher than the ambient
temperature (T amb), but always less than two percent of the maxi-
mum wall temperature, indicating that back-conduction effects
were negligible. Figure 4 shows the data 共wall temperature varia-
tion兲 collected from a typical experiment for Sample 2 共Table 1兲.
The data collected for all the samples is documented in Calmidi
Fig. 2 Schematic of the experimental setup used for the 关10兴.
forced convection experiments Using the measured wall temperature data, the heat flux is con-
Table 1 Characteristics of metal foam samples used in experimental study
d f (m) d p (m) K k se kfe

# Porosity PPI Fiber Dia. Pore Dia. f ( * 107 m2 ) 共W/m-K兲共W/m-K兲
1 0.9726 5 0.00050 0.00402 0.097 2.7 2.48 0.0256
2 0.9118 5 0.00055 0.00380 0.085 1.8 6.46 0.0237
3 0.9486 10 0.00040 0.00313 0.097 1.2 4.10 0.0248
4 0.9546 20 0.00030 0.00270 0.093 1.3 3.71 0.0250
5 0.9005 20 0.00035 0.00258 0.088 0.9 7.19 0.0233
6 0.9272 40 0.00025 0.00202 0.089 0.61 5.48 0.0242
7 0.9132 40 0.00025 0.00180 0.084 0.53 6.37 0.0237
The effect of varying the power input to the heaters was also
investigated to verify that nonlinear effects like buoyancy, radia-
tion, and property variation were negligible. In all cases studied,
the Nusselt number was found to be nearly independent of the
input power.
The experimental error estimate can be made based on the ac-
curacies in the measurement of the individual quantities. The error
共thermocouple calibration and resolution of the data acquisition
device兲 in the estimation of ⌬T avg is 0.3°C. Based on the pub-
lished accuracies of the voltmeter and ammeter, the error in the
estimate of q is two percent. The errors in the estimate of the
length and area are neglected because they are extremely low
共⬍0.3 percent of the measured quantity兲. Based on these values,
the error in the estimate of the Nusselt numbers is 4.3 percent.
This estimate is based on a representative value of ⌬T avg of 8°C.
Based on the accuracy of the pressure transducers, the error in the
estimate of the velocity is 4.1 percent.
Fig. 3 Schematic of side and top views of metal foam samples Analysis
used in the experiments
The steady volume-averaged momentum equation that governs
fluid flow in porous media is given by
verted into an average Nusselt number. The average temperature
⌬T avg is defined as the average of the six values of the tempera- ␳ ␮ 2 ␮ ␳f
2 ⵜ"uu⫽⫺ⵜp⫹ ⵜ u⫺ u⫺ 储 u储 u. (4)
ture measured. That is, ␧ ␧ K 冑K
⌬T avg⫽ 冉兺冊冒
n
i⫽1
T wi n⫺T in (1) In Eq. 共4兲, the drag due to the fibers is represented by the familiar
non-Darcy formulation. The third term on the R.H.S. of Eq. 共4兲 is
where n is the number of points where the wall temperature was the traditional Darcy term which is used to account for the pres-
measured. It is noted that, although this value is not the actual sure drop due to viscous friction at the walls of the fibers, and the
average wall temperature, it does represent an appropriate scale to fourth term is the nonlinear correction and represents the pressure
represent the temperature difference. Next an average heat trans- drop due to the form drag and the flow separation that takes place
fer coefficient is defined as at higher Reynolds numbers. A linear superposition of the two
terms as shown here is semi-empirical, but has been known to
h̄⫽q/ 共 A⌬T avg兲 (2) match experimental data in many situations 共关2,8,11–13兴兲. A
where q is the power input to the heaters and A is the area of cross modified form of Eq. 共4兲 was used by Calmidi 关10兴, Chapter 3, to
section of the metal foam. From this, an average Nusselt number determine the permeability, K, and the inertia coefficient, f, of the
is calculated using metal foam samples. These are listed in Table 1.
The energy equations for the solid and the fluid phases based on
Nu⫽h̄L/k e (3) thermal nonequilibrium are
冉冊冉冊
where L is the length of the heated section of the metal foam, and
k e is the effective thermal conductivity (k f e ⫹k se ) as given in ⳵ ⳵Ts ⳵ ⳵Ts
0⫽ k se ⫹ k se ⫺h s f a s f 共 T s ⫺T f 兲 (5)
Table 1. ⳵x ⳵x ⳵y ⳵y
Fig. 4 Variation in wall temperature with average flow velocity „Sample 2,

Table 1…
共␳cp兲 fu
⳵T f
⳵x
⫽
⳵
⳵x 冉
共 k f e ⫹k d 兲
⳵T f
⳵x
⫹
⳵
⳵y 冊冉
共 k f e ⫹k d 兲
⳵T f
⳵y 冊 Based on earlier work 共关2,7兴兲, the following model is proposed for
the dispersion conductivity:
⫹h s f a s f 共 T s ⫺T f 兲 . (6) kd u
⫽C D 共 ReK Pre 兲 . (12)
ke uo
The coupling between the two equations is achieved using the
interfacial term which represents the heat transfer between the two In Eq. 共12兲, the coefficient of thermal dispersion, C D , remains to
phases via a heat transfer coefficient, h s f , and the specific surface be determined. As a simplification, this model for k d does not
area, a s f . It is important to note that Eqs. 共5兲, and 共6兲 are semi- account for wall effects 共关19,20兴兲 except through the change in the
empirical and are not the full volume-averaged forms of the en- velocity profile near the wall.
ergy equations 共关14,15兴兲. The full volume-averaged treatment is One of the most comprehensive models for the interfacial heat
considerably complex, and has been solved exactly only for a transfer coefficient, h s f , for packed beds is by Wakao et al.
one-dimensional system of parallel capillary tubes 共关16兴兲. How- 共关17兴兲. For foamed materials, however, no such general model
ever, it is noted that the semi-empirical treatment employed here exists. However, the radial temperature gradients within the fibers
has been successfully used in the past to model transport in beds are expected to be small and it is reasonable to use the Nusselt
of spheres 共关17,18兴兲. number correlation for external flow over a body of an appropriate
An analytical model for obtaining the effective conductivity of cross section. Based on a correlation developed by Zukauskas 关21兴
metal foams has been derived in 共关5兴兲. Their experimentally vali- for cylinders in crossflow in the range of Reynolds numbers 共40–
dated model was based on the structure of metal foams. It is 1000兲, a model for the interfacial heat transfer is proposed as
冉冉
reproduced as follows:
冉冊 b b
冉冊
冉冑冊冉冊
r 共 1⫺r 兲
hsfd f
2 L L Nus f ⫽ ⫽C T Re0.5Pr0.37. (13)
冉冊
k e⫽ ⫹ kf
3 b 共 k s ⫺k f 兲 2 b
k f ⫹ 1⫹ kf⫹ 共 k s ⫺k f 兲 In Eq. 共13兲, an empiricism has been introduced in the form of the
L 3 3 L
冊冊
undetermined coefficient C T . The Reynolds number is based on
the cylinder diameter and Pr is the fluid Prandtl number. In apply-
冑3 b
⫺1
ing this correlation, the noncircular cross section of fibers has to
⫺
2 L be considered. However, upon examination of the Nusselt number
⫹
冉冊
(7) correlations for external flow over bodies of varying cross sec-
b 4r tions 共关22兴兲, it appears that the exponent of the Reynolds number
kf⫹ 共 k s ⫺k f 兲
3 冑3 L has a weak dependence on the cross section. The multiplicative
constant in Eq. 共13兲, however, varies considerably. Based on these
where r⫽0.09, and the ratio b/L is given by observations, Zukauskas’ correlation has been modified as shown
b
⫺r⫹ 冑 r 2 ⫹4 共 1⫺␧ 兲冉冉冉冊冊冒冊
冑3
2
2⫺r 1⫹
4
冑3
3
in Eq. 共13兲. Further, it is noted that, in Eq. 共13兲, the Reynolds
number is based on the fluid velocity near the fiber. Hence, due to
the presence of the solid matrix, its point value is Re⫽(ud f /␧␯).
冉冉冊冊
⫽ . The solid-fluid interfacial surface area for arrays of parallel cylin-
L 2 4
2⫺r 1⫹ ders intersecting in the three mutually perpendicular directions is
3 冑3
(8) 3␲d f
asf⫽ . (14)
The solid-phase conductivity, k se , is obtained by setting k f ⫽0, in d 2p
冉冉冉冊冊冊
Eq. 共7兲. By doing so
For metal foams, this expression is modified by taking the struc-
冉冊冉冉冊冊冉冊
b b 冑3 b ⫺1 ture into account 共i.e., open cells shaped like dodecahedra, and
r 共 1⫺r 兲 ⫺ noncircular fiber cross-section兲. By doing so, the values of d p and
2 L L 2 L
冉冊
k se ⫽ ⫹ ⫹ . d f , as given in Table 1, are multiplied by 0.59, and 1
冑3 b ks 2 b 4r b ⫺e ⫺ (( 1⫺␧ ) /0.04) , respectively 共see 关10兴, Chapter 1兲 before being
1⫹ ks ks
L 3 3 L 3 冑3 L used in Eq. 共14兲.
(9) The transport equations 共Eqs. 共4兲–共6兲兲 are nondimensionalized
using ⫺X⫽x/H, Y ⫽y/H, U⫽u/u o , ␪ ⫽(T⫺T in )/⌬T avg where
冉冉冊冉
Similarly, k f e is obtained by setting k s ⫽0 in Eq. 共7兲, u o is the average velocity entering the channel, H is the height of
冉冊冉冊
the channel, ⌬T avg is the average wall temperature, and T in in the
b b
r 共 1⫺r 兲 inlet fluid temperature. The resulting equations are
2 L L
冉冊冉冊
k f e⫽ ⫹ ␧
冑3 b 共 ⫺k f 兲 2 b d 2U
⫽ 共 U⫺1 兲 ⫹
ReK
f 冑␧ 共 U 2 ⫺1 兲
k f ⫹ 1⫹ kf⫹ 共 ⫺k f 兲 dY 2 冑Da Da
(15)
L 3 3 L
冊冊冉冊
冑3 b
⫺1 1 d 2␪ s d 2␪ s
⫺ 0⫽ ⫹ ⫺共 ␪ s⫺ ␪ f 兲 (16)
2 L Bis dX 2 dY 2
⫹
冉冊冉冉冊冊
. (10)
b 4r ⳵␪ f ⳵ Da ⳵␪ f
kf⫹ 共 ⫺k f 兲 U ⫽ ⫹C D U
3 冑3 L ⳵X ⳵X ReK Pr f e ⳵X
Values of k se and k f e obtained using Eqs. 共9兲 and 共10兲 are listed in
Table 1.
In Eqs. 共5兲 and 共6兲, the dispersion conductivity is assumed to be
⫹
⳵
⳵Y 冉冉 Da
ReK Pr f e
⫹C D U冊冊
⳵␪ f
⳵Y
⫹
Bi f
共␪ ⫺␪ f 兲
ReK Pr f e s
isotropic. That is (17)
k dx ⫽k dy ⫽k d . (11) where
u o 冑K 冑K hsfasfH2 h s f a s f H 冑K a specified error of 10⫺5 . This method of calculating the velocity
ReK ⫽ Da⫽ Bis ⫽ Bi f ⫽ . profile was checked by solving the full two-dimensional momen-
␯ H k se kfe
tum equation, Eq. 共4兲 in a rectangular domain with an aspect ratio
(18)
共length to height兲 of two using the ADI Method of Peaceman and
Note that Bis and Bi f are not constants but vary along the Rachford 共see 关24兴兲. The fully developed velocity profile obtained
y-direction, since h s f 共Eq. 共13兲兲 depends on the velocity. In Eqs. from this simulation was identical to the exact solution given by
共15兲–共18兲, all quantities except C D and C T are known. Eq. 共21兲. Since computational time could be saved considerably
The heat dissipation from the heated wall occurs both through by using the exact solution, it was employed for all further
the fluid phase and the solid phase. Hence, the total heat trans- computations.
ferred can be written as The energy equations were solved using the ADI finite differ-
冕冉冊
ence scheme of Peaceman and Rachford 共关24兴兲. The convective
L ⳵Ts ⳵T f
q⫽h̄L⌬T avg⫽⫺ k se ⫹k f e dx. (19) term in the fluid-phase equation was discretized using first-order
0 ⳵y ⳵y upwind differencing for increased stability. The diffusion terms in
the solid-phase and fluid-phase equations were discretized using
Writing Eq. 共19兲 in nondimensional form, an average Nusselt three-point stencils in each direction. To avoid energy balance
number for the heated surface is problems, the numerical domain was extended by five percent at
Nu⫽
h̄L
ke
⫽⫺ 冕冉
L/H
0 ke ⳵Y
⫹
ke ⳵Y 冊
k se ⳵ ␪ s k f e ⳵ ␪ f
dX. (20)
the inlet and the exit. Extensions of 10 percent and 15 percent had
no effect on the temperature field or the Nusselt number in the
heated section. The equations were marched to asymptotic steady
Equation 共20兲 has been formulated to directly compare experi- state. The convergence criterion for steady state was that the
mental results with model predictions. change in the solid-phase and fluid-phase temperatures was less
than 10⫺4 between successive iterations. At steady state, a heat
balance within one percent was obtained. A time-step of size 0.03
Numerical Procedure was found to be an efficient value. While reducing the time-step
A schematic of the numerical domain is shown in Fig. 5 along below this value did not have any effect on the final solution, the
with the orientation of the coordinate axes. Numerical boundary convergence rate slowed down.
conditions are also shown in Fig. 5. For the heated wall, the ex-
perimentally determined wall temperature profile is specified. The
temperature gradients for both the solid phase and the fluid phase Grid Dependency and Code Validation
are zero on the insulated wall. At the inlet, the fluid is assumed to
enter at the inlet temperature T in . At the exit, a zero diffusion A constant grid spacing was used in the X-direction and a vari-
condition is assumed for the fluid phase. This assumption is rea- able grid spacing was used in the Y-direction. The variable grid
sonable, since advection is expected to be the dominant mode of was laid out in three layers. In Layers I and III, adjacent to the
transport in the streamwise 共x兲 direction. The solid phase is as- heated and insulated walls, respectively, a constant grid spacing
sumed to be insulated at both the inlet and the exit. ⌬Y was used. In Layer II, sandwiched between Layers I and III, a
A fully developed velocity profile is prescribed at the inlet. This variable grid was used. Table 2 summarizes the results obtained
velocity profile 共function of Y alone兲 is calculated using the exact during the grid dependency tests for one of the test samples 共see
solution for the second-order nonlinear ODE, Eq. 共15兲. Following 关10兴, Chapter 4兲 with ReK⫽84.1.
Vafai and Kim 关23兴, the exact solution due to flow through a The first column in Table 2 refers to the constant grid spacing
channel is given by expressing the pressure drop in terms of the ⌬Y in Layers I and III in the Y-direction. The second and third
center-line velocity. It is reproduced below: columns refer to the number of grid points in Layer II and the
total number of grid points in the Y-direction, respectively. The
U⫽U c 1⫺冋冉冊 A⫹B
A
共 cosh共 D 共 1⫺2Y ⫹C 兲兲兲 2 册 fourth column is the number of grid points in the heated section
along the X-direction. Based on the grid dependence study, the
grid parameters listed in the second row were used for all
A⫽␧ f Re/6Da2 B⫽␧/ 共 4Da2 兲 ⫹2A (21) computations.
冉冑冊冑
In order to validate the code, numerical results were compared
1 A⫹B A⫹B to those of Yokoyama and Mahajan 关25兴 as summarized in Table
C⫽⫺ acosh ⫺1 D⫽ .
D A 2 3. The numerical results 共关25兴兲 are indicated within parentheses.
Pe* in Table 3 is defined according to 共关25兴兲.
Since the average velocity u o , and not the center-line velocity is
known, the center-line velocity had to be guessed and iterated
until mass balance was achieved. That is, the integral of the non-
dimensional velocity over the height of the channel is unity within Table 2 Results from grid dependency simulations
⌬Y nY2 nY n⫻heat Nu
⫺4 51 63 80 10.97
5 * 10
2.5* 10⫺4 51 73 80 11.02
2.5* 10⫺4 101 123 80 11.02
2.5* 10⫺4 51 73 120 11.02
Table 3 Comparison of numerical results with those in

Yokoyama and Mahajan †25‡
Pe* C D ⫽0 C D ⫽0.025
5000 64.9 共64.5兲 80.1 共79.4兲
7000 75.5 共75.0兲 98.5 共97.9兲
Fig. 5 Schematic of numerical domain with boundary condi- 10000 88.8 共88.1兲 123.6 共124.9兲
tions
Results and Discussion To understand the relative magnitudes of the various transport
phenomena, it is useful to examine the solid and fluid-phase heat
Using the numerical code, computations were performed for the
transfer rates at the heated wall. In Fig. 8, the local variations of
conditions of the experiments to verify if the results could be
the nondimensional heat transfer rates 共the two components of Eq.
matched in a reasonable manner, and to determine appropriate
共20兲兲 are plotted. Clearly, the fluid-phase component accounts for
values for C D and C T . The experimental data was collected in
a negligibly small portion of the total heat rate. Further, its local
the range of nondimensional parameters, ReK⬃11– 135, Da
value decreases rapidly along the streamwise direction. This can
⬃5⫻10⫺3 ⫺1⫻10⫺2 , and Pre ⬃2.6⫻10⫺3 ⫺7.5⫻10⫺3 . Note be explained as follows. The predominant mode of transport from
that the effective Prandtl number values are extremely small com- the heated surface to the fluid is by conduction through the solid
pared to the fluid Prandtl number 共0.707兲 due to the high thermal phase and interfacial heat transfer from the solid to the fluid
conductivity of the metal foam. phase. Due to the efficient interfacial heat transfer, the fluid tem-
First, the condition of zero dispersion 共i.e., C D ⫽0兲 was studied. perature is close to the solid temperature. This has an effect of
Figure 6 shows a plot of the Nusselt number as a function of decreasing the fluid temperature gradient at the wall 共by thicken-
ReKPre for different values of C T with C D ⫽0. The results are for ing the boundary layer兲, and consequently the local heat transfer
Sample 2, and the experimental points are shown by the solid rate. Further, since the fluid conductivity is much smaller than the
symbols. As expected, the Nusselt number increases with increase solid conductivity, the net heat transferred from the wall to the
in C T since the efficiency of heat transfer between the two phases fluid is low.
improves. However, note that there is practically no difference in In the numerical results presented so far, thermal dispersion has
the computed results for C T ⬎0.52 indicating that the phases are not been taken into account. It can be seen from the plot in Fig. 8
close to the thermal equilibrium condition. Figure 7 shows the that the heat transferred directly to the fluid from the heated wall
variation of the temperature profile along the transverse direction is negligible compared to the heat transferred interfacially from
at the midplane for three different Reynolds numbers. Note that the solid to the fluid. Hence, the dispersion phenomenon that pri-
the adiabatic wall temperature 共i.e., the wall temperature at Y marily enhances the wall heat transfer, is expected to be low.
⫽1兲 for the solid and fluid phases is not the same as the ambient Figure 9 shows a plot of the total Nusselt number as a function of
temperature for all three values of ReK . However, as ReK in- ReKPre for Sample 2. The plots are for two different values of C T
creases, the adiabatic wall temperature approaches the ambient as shown in the figure. For each C T value, two lines are shown.
temperature. The indication is that the thermal boundary layer at They are the results of numerical simulations with and without the
the heated wall decreases with increase in ReK . inclusion of dispersion effects. For the simulations for which dis-
Fig. 8 Solid and fluid phase local heat transfer rate. Sample 2,
Fig. 6 Nu as a function of ReKPre for different values of C T . ReKÄ103.8.
Data are for Sample 2.
Fig. 7 Nondimensional temperature along the transverse di- Fig. 9 Nu as a ReKPre with dispersion effect included „ C D
rection. C T Ä0.52, Sample 2. Ä0.1…. Data is for Sample 2.
Table 4 Characteristics of foam samples used in Hunt and effect on the overall transport is negligible because, as mentioned
Tien †2‡ before, the dominant mode of transport is by conduction through
the solid phase and interfacial convection, which is largely unaf-
K * 107 k se kfe
No. Material ␧ d p (cm) 共m2兲 f 共W/m-K兲共W/m-K兲
fected by dispersion. The value, C D ⫽0.1, used for illustrating this
is not entirely arbitrary. It is based on order of magnitude esti-
H1 C 0.97 0.2 4.1 0.11 0.073 0.58 mates in 共关7兴兲. In any case, it is clear that it is difficult to accu-
H2 C 0.97 0.1 0.92 0.077 0.073 0.58 rately quantify dispersion effects when the solid-phase conductiv-
H3 Ni 0.97 0.1 0.96 0.089 0.854 0.579
H4 Al 0.97 0.2 4.8 0.17 2.19 0.579 ity is much larger than its fluid-phase counterpart, as is the case
H5 Al 0.94 0.25 17.0 0.30 3.84 0.558 here.
Although an accurate estimate of C D cannot be made by using
the metal foam-air experiments, an estimate of C T is possible.
From Fig. 9, it is seen that a good match of the data with the
numerical results is obtained with C T ⫽0.52. This value is repre-
sentative of heat transfer from cylinders in crossflow 共关21兴兲. Fur-
ther, as will be seen later, this value of C T is sufficient to model
forced convection transport in metal foams with water as the fluid
phase. We note here that a two-equation model for energy may
not be necessary for all combinations of experimental data. How-
ever, a detailed study that establishes bounds for nondimensional
parameters for which two-equation analyses are necessary may be
useful for application to practical situations 共see, for example,
关26兴兲.
The only other experimental and theoretical work that addresses
forced convection in metal foams is that of Hunt and Tien 关2兴.
Their study used foams made of aluminum, nickel, carbon, with
water as the fluid phase. Hence, the fluid conductivity is not a
negligible fraction of the effective conductivity. Consequently,
dispersion effects are expected to be much higher. Although an
error was found in the numerical calculations 共which eventually
Fig. 10 Nusselt number as a function of ReKPre for different led to the conclusion that C D ⫽0.025兲, the experiments seemed to
values of C D „Sample H3…
be in order. Of the seven samples used in their experiment, five
representative samples were chosen for analysis here 共see Table
4兲. The conductivities in the last two columns of Table 4 were
persion effects were included, a value C D ⫽0.1 was used. As it is evaluated using the expressions developed in this study 共Eqs.
evident from the figure, dispersion has no significant effect on the 共9兲,共10兲兲. Since water was used as the fluid phase, interfacial heat
total transport. This is immediately clear by re-examining the ther- transfer was efficient and all samples satisfied local thermal equi-
mal dispersion model postulated earlier, librium conditions as expected. 共C T ⫽0.52 was used for the com-
kd putations, based on the aluminum-air study described earlier.兲
⫽C D 共 ReK Pre 兲 . (22) To study the dispersion effect numerically, Sample H3 was
ke chosen for investigation. The average heat transfer coefficients
For k d to have any significant effect on the overall transport, it were extracted from their experimental Nusselt numbers and used
must be at least of the same order of magnitude as k e . For a here for comparison. The computed Nusselt numbers for different
typical value of ReKPre ⫽0.3, and C D ⫽0.1, k d is merely three values of the dispersion coefficient, C D , are shown in Fig. 10
percent of the total stagnant thermal conductivity. Although its along with the experimental data. A reasonable fit is obtained for
value is still seven times higher than the fluid conductivity, the C D ⫽0.06. As expected, and unlike in the aluminum foam-air
Fig. 11 Comparison of numerical simulations „this study… with the experi-

mental results in Hunt and Tien †2‡ for samples in Table 4
Fig. 12 Nusselt number as a function of ReK for the five PPl Fig. 15 Nusselt number as a function of ReK for the 40 PPl
samples „Table 1… samples „Table 1…
enhancement compared to the low value of three percent obtained

earlier for the aluminum-air combination. The experimental re-
sults in 共关2兴兲 are plotted in Fig. 11 for a thermal dispersion coef-
ficient value of 0.06. A good fit is obtained for all samples, sug-
gesting that C D ⫽0.06 is appropriate.
By analyzing the data collected in this study for foam-air com-
binations, and that published in Hunt and Tien 关2兴 for foam-water
combinations, the coefficients C T and C D values of 0.52, and 0.06
seem reasonable. As a last check, numerical simulations were per-
formed for the same experimental conditions of all samples 共Table
1兲 used in the present study. The results of these simulations are
plotted in Figs. 12–15 as a function of the Reynolds number,
along with the experimental data. Once again, a very good fit with
the experimental data is obtained confirming the values of C D and
C T to be good. However, the following point is noted. There
appears to be a systematic deviation between the experimental and
computed results for high Reynolds number. In particular, the
numerical results appear to underpredict the experimental Nusselt
Fig. 13 Nusselt number as a function of ReK for the ten PPl
number for ReK⬎80. The indication is that some other transport
samples „Table 1…
enhancing effect 共e.g., turbulence兲 may be taking effect. No such
systematic deviation is observed in the experimental results of
Hunt and Tien 关2兴. However, the maximum Reynolds number in
that study was around 60.
Summary
A detailed study of forced convection in metal foams has been
performed. The goal of the study was to quantify thermal disper-
sion and thermal nonequilibrium effects in metal foams. To this
end, both experimental and numerical methods were employed.
Experiments were performed with a wide variety of aluminum
metal foams. Results indicate that for foam-air combinations, the
transport enhancing effect of thermal dispersion is extremely low
due to the relatively high conductivity of the solid matrix. How-
ever, for foam-water combinations, ours and past available results
indicate that thermal dispersion can be very high and accounts for
bulk of the transport.
A thermal nonequilibrium model was used in all cases. The
values C T ⫽0.52, and C D ⫽0.06 were found to be appropriate.
Currently, forced convection transport in foamed materials is be-
Fig. 14 Nusselt number as a function of ReK for the 20 PPl ing studied using foams of other materials 共carbon, copper兲 along
samples „Table 1… with various fluids 共air, water, FC-72兲 in order to reconfirm the
results of the present study. Those findings will appear in a future
publication.
combination used in this study, the dispersion effect is consider-
able here. In this particular case, heat transfer enhancement due to
dispersion is almost 80 percent. Using Eq. 共22兲, and a representa- Acknowledgments
tive value of ReKPre ⫽30, the dispersion conductivity is calculated This work was funded by CAMPmode at the University of
to be 175 percent of the stagnant conductivity. This is a significant Colorado. The authors wish to thank Dr. Yoichi Yokoyama for
helpful discussions and Mr. Bryan Leyda of ERG, Inc. for provid- tivity of High Porosity Fibrous Metal Foams,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 121,
pp. 466–471.
ing the experiment samples and for discussions at various stages 关6兴 Bhattacharya, A., Calmidi, V. V., and Mahajan, R. L., 1999, ‘‘An Analytical-
of this work. Experimental Study for the Determination of the Effective Thermal Conduc-
tivity of High-Porosity Fibrous Foams,’’ ASME IMECE ’99, ASME, New
Nomenclature York, pp. 13–20.
关7兴 Koch, D. L., and Brady, J. F., 1986, ‘‘The Effective Diffusivity of Fibrous
asf ⫽ specific solid-fluid interfacial surface area 共m⫺1兲 Media,’’ AIChE J., 32, pp. 575–591.
Bi f ⫽ h s f a s f H 冑K/k f e , fluid-phase effective Biot number 关8兴 Hsu, C. T., and Cheng, P., 1990, ‘‘Thermal Dispersion in Porous Media,’’ Int.
J. Heat Mass Transf., 33, No. 8, pp. 1587–1597.
Bis ⫽ h s f a s f H 2 /k se , solid-phase effective Biot number 关9兴 Adnani, P., Catton, I., and Abdou, M. A., 1995, ‘‘Non-Darcian Forced Con-
CD ⫽ coefficient of thermal dispersion vection in Porous Media With Anisotropic Dispersion,’’ ASME J. Heat Trans-
CT ⫽ coefficient in Eq. 共13兲 fer, 117, pp. 447–451.
Da ⫽ 冑K/H, Darcy number 关10兴 Calmidi, V. V., 1998, ‘‘Transport Phenomena in High Porosity Metal Foams,’’
Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
f ⫽ inertia coefficient 关11兴 Beavers, G. S., and Sparrow, E. M., 1969, ‘‘Non-Darcy Flow Through Fibrous
hsf ⫽ interfacial heat transfer coefficient 共W/m2-K兲 Porous Media,’’ ASME J. Appl. Mech., 36, pp. 711–714.
K ⫽ permeability 共m2兲关12兴 Vafai, K., and Tien, C. L., 1981, ‘‘Boundary and Inertial Effects on Flow and
Pre ⫽ ␮ c p /k e , Prandtl number based on effective conduc- Heat Transfer in Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 24, pp. 195–203.
关13兴 DuPlessis, P., Montillet, A., Comiti, J., and Legrand, J., 1994, ‘‘Pressure Drop
tivity Prediction for Flow Through High Porosity Metallic Foams,’’ Chem. Eng.
q ⫽ heat input to patch heaters 共W兲 Sci., 49, pp. 3545–3553.
ReK ⫽ u o 冑K/ ␯ , Reynolds number based on permeability 关14兴 Carbonell, R. G., and Whitaker, S., 1984, ‘‘Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous
T in ⫽ measured fluid temperature 共before entering heated Media,’’ Fundamentals of Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, Bear and
Corapcioglu, eds., Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 121–
section兲共°C兲 198.
T amb ⫽ measured fluid temperature 共before entering unheated 关15兴 Kaviany, M., 1994, Convective Heat Transfer, Springer-Verlag, New York.
section兲共°C兲关16兴 Zanotti, F., and Carbonell, R. G., 1984, ‘‘Development of Transport Equations
T wi ⫽ measured wall temperatures 共°C兲 for Multiphase System-III,’’ Chem. Eng. Sci., 39, pp. 299–311.
⌬T avg ⫽ average wall temperature with respect to fluid inlet 关17兴 Wakao, N., Kaguei, S., and Funazkri, T., 1979, ‘‘Effect of Fluid Dispersion
Coefficients on Particle-to-Fluid Heat Transfer Co-efficients in Packed Beds,’’
temperature, T in Chem. Eng. Sci., 34, pp. 325–336.
uo ⫽ measured average flow velocity entering foam sample 关18兴 Hwang, G. J., and Chao, C. H., 1994, ‘‘Heat Transfer Measurements and
共m/s兲 Analysis for Sintered Porous Channels,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp.
725–732.
Greek Symbols 关19兴 Cheng, P., and Vortmeyer, D., 1988, ‘‘Transverse Thermal Dispersion and
␪ ⫽ (T⫺T in )/(⌬T avg) Wall Channelling in a Packed Bed With Forced Convective Flow,’’ Int. J.
Heat Mass Transf., 43, No. 9, pp. 2523–2532.
Subscripts 关20兴 Koch, D. L., 1996, ‘‘Hydrodynamic Diffusion Near Solid Boundaries With
Applications to Heat and Mass Transport Into Sheared Suspensions and Fixed-
d ⫽ dispersive Fibre Beds,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 318, pp. 31–47.
e ⫽ effective 关21兴 Zukauskas, A. A., 1987, ‘‘Convective Heat Transfer in Cross-Flow,’’ Hand-
book of Single-Phase Heat Transfer, Kakac, S., et al., eds. Wiley, New York.
关22兴 Incropera, F. P., and DeWitt, D., 1997, Fundamentals of Heat and Mass
References Transfer, Wiley, New York.
关1兴 Kaviany, M., 1991, Principles of Heat Transfer in Porous Media, Springer- 关23兴 Vafai, K., and Kim, S. J., 1989, ‘‘Forced Convection in a Channel Filled with
Verlag, New York. a Porous Medium: An Exact Solution,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 111, pp.
关2兴 Hunt, M. L., and Tien, C. L., 1988, ‘‘Effects of Thermal Dispersion on Forced 1103–1106.
Convection in Fibrous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 31, pp. 301–309. 关24兴 Roache, P. J., 1982, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Hermosa, Albuquerque,
关3兴 Sathe, S. B., Peck, R. E., and Tong, T. W., 1990, ‘‘A Numerical Analysis of NM.
Heat Transfer and Combustion in Porous Radiant Burners,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass 关25兴 Yokoyama, Y., and Mahajan, R. L., 1995, ‘‘Non-Darcian Convective Heat
Transf., 33, No. 6, pp. 1331–1338. Transfer in a Horizontal Duct,’’ Proceedings of the National Heat Transfer
关4兴 Lee, Y. C., Zhang, W., Xie, H., and Mahajan, R. L., 1993, ‘‘Cooling of a Conference, Vol. 7, ASME, New York, pp. 83–92.
FCHIP Package With 100 W, 1 cm2 Chip,’’ Proceedings of the 1993 ASME 关26兴 Amiri, A., and Vafai, K., 1994, ‘‘Analysis of Dispersion Effects and Local
Int. Elec. Packaging Conf., Vol. 1, ASME, New York, pp. 419–423. Thermal Non-Equilibrium, Non-Darcian, Variable Porosity Incompressible
关5兴 Calmidi, V. V., and Mahajan, R. L., 1999, ‘‘The Effective Thermal Conduc- Flow Through Porous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 37, pp. 939–954.
Estimating Number of Shells in
Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers:
A New Approach Based on
Temperature Cross
B. B. Gulyani1 Multipass heat exchangers are often designed by using the rule of thumb F T ⭓0.75, which
Research Associate,
Department of Chemical Engineering,
is rather arbitrary. F T falls sharply with the increase in temperature cross. Hence, only a
University of Roorkee,
limited temperature cross can be allowed. The ability to accommodate temperature cross
Roorkee 247667, India
increases rapidly as the number of shell passes is increased. Though many investigators
e-mail: bbgulyani@yahoo.com
have emphasized the importance of temperature cross in exchanger design, it has as yet
not been explicitly accounted for in the design. This paper introduces a new approach for
estimating the number shells in a shell and tube exchanger which directly accounts for
temperature cross, rather than routing this effect through F T or X P (Ahmad et al.’s
parameter, which is again a correction factor not directly related to temperature cross).
The approach is compatible with the established design procedures and bypasses the F T .
It generates better designs by defining maximum permissible temperature cross, than the
traditional designs based on specifying minimum permissible F T . Expressions have also
been provided which correlate the present formulation with that of Ahmad et al.
关S0022-1481共00兲00803-3兴
Keywords: Analytical, Heat Exchangers, Heat Transfer
1 Introduction passes, low F T values force the designer to go for higher shell
pass arrangements. Hence, F T is used as a criterion to screen
Shell and tube heat exchangers have long been established as
alternative designs.
industry standard because of several advantages including higher
When multishell arrangements are found necessary, it becomes
heat transfer coefficients and compactness, ease of construction
pertinent to estimate number of shells required. This is done using
and maintenance. In case of the simplest shell and tube exchanger,
either a trial and error approach or the explicit formulation given
the 1–2 type, the liquid in one tube pass flows in counter flow
by Ahmad et al. 关7兴.
while in the other pass flows in parallel relative to shell fluid 共Fig.
This paper describes a new approach for estimating the number
1兲. The method of calculation of log mean temperature difference,
shells in a shell and tube exchanger which directly accounts for
LMTD for counter flow as well as parallel flow, is well estab-
temperature cross. The approach is compatible with the estab-
lished 共关1兴兲. For a case, like that of 1–2 shell and tube exchanger
lished design procedures and bypasses the F T . Its main advan-
where both types of flow co-exist, an analytical expression for
tages are as follows:
estimating effective temperature difference has been developed by
Underwood 关2兴 and later modified by Bowman et al. 关3兴. In this 1 The number of shells are calculated explicitly.
design practice, a correction factor F T is introduced into the basic
heat exchanger design equation, Eq. 共1兲 to take into account the
above phenomena,
Q⫽UA 共 LMTD兲 F T where 0⬍F T ⬍1. (1)
The F T factor can be represented as the ratio of actual mean

temperature difference in a 1–2 exchanger to counter flow LMTD
for the same terminal temperatures. The physical significance of
F T is given by many authors 共关4–6兴兲.
The difference between the outlet temperature of hot fluid, T 2 ,
and that of the cold fluid, t 2 is thermally significant, and is called
temperature cross if negative, and temperature approach if posi-
tive. When there is a large temperature cross in a 1–2 exchanger,
local reversal of heat flow may be encountered, requiring exces-
sive exchanger area or even making the design infeasible. This
fact manifests itself into low values of F T . Since the ability to
accommodate temperature cross increases with increasing shell
1
Address for correspondence: 71/3, Govind Puri, University of Roorkee, Roorkee
247667, India.
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Dec. 1, 1998;
revision received, Feb. 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Kaminski. Fig. 1 Schematic of a 1–2 exchanger
2 It generates better designs by defining maximum permissible Ahmad et al. 关7兴 have given an analytical expression for calcu-
temperature cross, than the traditional designs based on rules of lating number of shells directly,
thumb for specifying minimum permissible F T .
3 The procedure is conceptually better as it directly accounts 共 1⫺RS 兲
ln
for the effect of temperature cross, rather than routing this effect 共 1⫺S 兲
through F T or X P 共Ahmad’s parameter, which is again a correc- N⫽ , (6)
ln W
tion factor not directly related to temperature cross兲.
where N is real 共noninteger兲 number of shells, and
Expressions have also been provided which correlate the
present formulation with that of Ahmad et al. 关7兴. R⫹1⫹ 冑R 2 ⫹1⫺2RX P
W⫽ . (7)
R⫹1⫹ 冑R 2 ⫹1⫺2X P
2 The F T Correction Factors
Equation 共6兲 gives a value of N that satisfies precisely the cho-
F T has been correlated as a function of dimensionless ratios R sen value of X P . The problem now is, what should be the design
and S, where value of X P ? And how it will affect temperature cross and, con-
T 1 ⫺T 2 sequently, F T ? Though Ahmad et al. emphasized the importance
heat capacity ratio, R⫽ (2) of temperature cross in exchanger design, they did not explain
t 2 ⫺t 1
how X P accounts for temperature cross. Their choice of value of
and X P ⫽0.9 is based on F T ⫽0.75 at R⫽1, which is again arbitrary.
What if a designer wants to use a lower value of X P ? How much
t 2 ⫺t 1 improvement in temperature cross and F T shall be achieved by
thermal effectiveness, S⫽ . (3)
T 1 ⫺t 1 this?
Since F T is used to screen alternative designs, before resorting
to detailed design calculation, designs with unacceptably low F T
values are discarded. A commonly used rule of thumb requires 5 Accounting for Temperature Cross
F T ⬎0.75 for the design to be considered practical. However, the
use of this ad hoc criterion for 1–2 exchanger is arbitrary, and can Since a 1–2 exchanger is a combination of counterflow and
lead to poor designs if not used with caution 共关7,8兴兲. Frank 关9兴 parallel-flow passes, it may be expected that the outlet tempera-
recommends that the 1–2 exchangers should not be designed ture of one process stream cannot approach the inlet temperature
where F T factors approach a vertical slope, as small departure of the other very closely 共关1兴兲. In fact, the difference between the
from the design point can result in precipitous decline of correc- outlet temperature of hot fluid, T 2 , and that of the cold fluid, t 2
tion factor. Thus, the advice to the designer to refrain from de- has particular thermal significance and introduces the terminology
signing with F T ⬍0.75 comes mainly because of steep slopes of of temperature approach, temperature ‘‘meet,’’ and temperature
the F T curves in that region, which prohibits the designer to esti- cross, as
mate F T correctly. Secondly, the performance becomes sensitive when t 2 ⬍T 2 , there is temperature approach.
to small departure from given temperatures. Therefore, small fluc-
when t 2 ⫽T 2 , there is temperature meet.
tuations in terminal temperatures 共consequently, in S兲 will lead to
considerable variation in the value of F T , leading to poor when t 2 ⬎T 2 , there is temperature cross.
operability. For a 1–2 exchanger, F T falls sharply with increase in the value
of temperature cross, (t 2 ⫺T 2 ). At large temperature cross, local
3 The X P Design Method reversal of heat flow leads to waste of heat transfer area. Hence,
only a limited temperature cross can be allowed. The ability to
Ahmad et al. 关7兴 have given an alternative approach based on accommodate a temperature cross increases rapidly as the number
the fact that for any value of R there exists a maximum asymptotic of shell passes is increased.
value of S, defined as S max and can be expressed as A dimensionless group, G, proposed by Wales 关10兴 and Guly-
2 ani and Mohanty 关11兴 accounts for the extent of temperature ap-
S max⫽ . (4) proach or cross. G is defined as
R⫹1⫹ 冑R 2 ⫹1
T 2 ⫺t 2
A 1–2 exchanger designed for S⫽S max will not be feasible, G⫽ . (8)
since it corresponds to F T ⫽⫺⬁. Ahmad et al. defined an accept- T 1 ⫺t 1
able design having the value of S as a fraction, X P , of S max . F T decreases moderately with decreasing positive G values, but
Accordingly, falls sharply both where the temperature meet (G⫽0) and where
S⫽S max X P where 0⬍X P ⬍1. (5) the G values are negative 共temperature cross兲. This fact is re-
vealed in Fig. 2, which shows the effect of G on F T for 1–2
However, they don’t provide a sound criterion to select the exchanger. From this figure, it is also evident that the higher the
design value of X P . Also, X P does not reflect the effect of tem- R, the sharper is the fall in F T .
perature cross. The parameter G is related to parameter R and S, by the
equation
4 Design for Multipass Exchangers G⫽1⫺S 共 1⫹R 兲 . (9)
Designers often encounter situations where either the F T is too
low or the slope of F T versus S curve is too large. If this happens, For any value of R there exists a minimum asymptotic value of
the designer might be forced to consider multipass exchangers. G 共corresponding to F T ⫽⫺⬁兲, say G min , which represents the
Traditionally, the designer would approach a problem requiring maximum temperature cross theoretically feasible in 1–2 ex-
multiple shells by trial and error. By assuming a number of shells, changer. The expression for G min is 共relevant derivations are pro-
usually one in the first instance, the F T is evaluated. If the F T is vided in Appendix兲
not acceptable then the number of shells in series is progressively 冑R 2 ⫹1⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲
increased until a satisfactory value of F T is obtained for each G min⫽ . (10)
shell. 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲
Fig. 2 Effect on G on F T Fig. 3 Variation of F T with R for G Ä0
A 1–2 exchanger designed for G⫽G min will not be feasible. Any
increment in G from G min will make the exchanger feasible, and intuitive, and straightforward. Y is chosen by the designer’s deci-
improve exchanger effectiveness and F T . Let the desired incre- sion on how much temperature cross he is going to allow in the
design. Here, two cases may be considered:
ment be Y. Then
1 Do Not Allow any Temperature Cross. This criteria per-
G⫽G min⫹Y (11) tains to G⫽0; or Y ⫽⫺G min . Figure 3 shows the variation of F T
where Y is a constant set by the designer. Now, the expression for with R for G⫽0. Figure 4 shows variation of F T with S for G
estimating the number of shells can be written as ⫽0. Both figures reveal that for G⫽0, F T ⬎0.8. Also, F T is mini-
mum at R⫽1, and increases when R is either increased or de-
共 1⫺RG N 兲 creased. Hence, if no temperature cross is allowed, it means that
ln
共 R⫹G N 兲 F T is always greater than 0.8 共which is indeed the value of F T
N⫽ (12) recommended by some investigators兲. This serves as a convenient
ln W
criterion for calculating the number of shells. Substituting G⫽0
where G N is G for multipass exchanger, and in Eq. 共A17兲 of the Appendix, we get
冑R 2 ⫹1 共 R⫹1⫺RY 兲 ⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲共 R⫺1⫺RY 兲
W⫽ . (13)
冑R 2 ⫹1 共 R⫹1⫺Y 兲 ⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲共 R⫺1⫺Y 兲
Y can be correlated with X P as 共see Appendix for derivation兲
2 共 R⫹1 兲共 1⫺X P 兲
Y⫽ . (14)
冑R 2 ⫹1⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲
Alternatively,
共 R⫹1 兲共 2⫺Y 兲 ⫺Y 冑R 2 ⫹1
X P⫽ . (15)
2 共 R⫹1 兲
6 The Significance of Y
It must be noted that unlike F T and X P , Y is not a correction
factor. Y is a measure of the extent the temperature cross is away
from the limiting value (G min). In that sense, it is similar to G. As
it is directly related to the terminal temperatures of the exchanger,
it may be seen as a ‘‘primary’’ parameter 共like R, S, and G兲, as
against the secondary parameters 共F T and X P 兲. Hence, Y clearly
reflects the designer’s attempt to reduce the temperature cross.
7 The Criteria for Selecting Y

While the design value of F T is chosen so as to avoid the
regions of steep fall, and that of the X P is chosen on a similar
basis, the criterion for selecting a design value of Y is simple, Fig. 4 Variation of F T with S for G Ä0
Fig. 7 Comparison of X P and Y parameters
Fig. 5 Comparison of G Ä0 criteria with F T Ä0.75 criteria
always greater than 0.75. This region is always feasible. In region
冉冊
B, 0.022⬍Y ⬍0.1225, feasibility of F T ⭓0.75 criteria is
R⫹G N R-dependent.
ln
1⫹RG N The designer is usually too colloquial to the F T concept. He
N⫽ . (16) would like to know the value of F T at the assumed Y 共or X P 兲. The
ln共 R 兲
value of F T can be readily obtained from G by using linear equa-
Figure 5 compares this criteria with F T ⫽0.75 criteria. The region tions provided by Gulyani and Mohanty 关11兴.
below the iso-G line 共or iso-F T curve兲 is the region of multipass It is worthwhile here to compare all the three approaches 共the
exchangers. From this figure, it can be readily known whether F T approach, the X P approach, and the Y approach兲. In Fig. 7,
designer has to opt for a multipass exchanger, using either of the iso-Y and iso-X P lines are shown on standard F T plot for 1–2
two criteria 共G⫽0 or F T ⫽0.75兲. exchanger.
2 Allow Some Temperature Cross. Based on the chosen Y This figure serves two purposes. It gives the value of F T 共and
and using Eq. 共13兲 and 共12兲 the number of shells can be estimated. X P 兲 at the selected value of Y. Secondly, it gives the estimate of Y
Figure 6 shows the effect of Y on F T for 0.1⭐R⭐1.0 共it actually 共thus temperature cross兲 for the chosen value of F T 共or X P 兲.
amounts to range of R: 0.1⭐R⭐10; since F T is the same for R Figure 7 also reveals that, to be compatible with the existing
and 1/R兲. There are three regions in Fig. 6 marked as A, B, and C. design practices 共F T ⬎0.75; or X P ⫽0.9兲, a value of Y in the range
In region A, Y ⭐0.022, F T is less than 0.75 for all values of R. 0.1 to 0.15 may be selected.
This region is always infeasible. In region C, Y ⭓0.1225, F T is
8 Effect of Y on Number of Shells, N
Figure 8 shows the effect of Y on N for R⫽0.2 and for different
G N values. Figure 9 shows the effect of Y on N for R⫽1.0 and for
different G N values. These figures reveal that both Y and G N
contribute to increase the number of shells. At higher temperature
cross, the effect of Y on N is more pronounced. Figures 8 and 9
may also be used to estimate the number of shells for given R and
G and chosen Y.
9 The Effect of Rounding Off N

It must be mentioned here that the number of shells computed
using Ahmad et al.’s expression 共Eq. 共6兲兲 as well as the expres-
sion developed in this paper 共Eq. 共12兲兲, is in fact the real 共nonin-
teger兲 number of shells. However, in actual practice, the design
can have only an integer number of shells. Hence, the number of
shells obtained from Eq. 共12兲 is rounded off to next integer. This
results in improvement in Y.
Now, the designer would like to know that if N is rounded off
to integer M, how much is Y improved? This can be calculated
from following expression:
R⫺1 冑R 2 ⫹1 共 W⫺1 兲 ⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲共 W⫹1 兲
Y ⬘⫽ (17)
R⫺W 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
Fig. 6 Effect of Y on F T where Y ⬘ is improved Y, and
M ⫽ number of shells 共integer兲
N ⫽ real 共noninteger兲 number of shells
R ⫽ heat capacity ratio, (T 1 ⫺T 2 )/(t 2 ⫺t 1 ) dimensionless
S ⫽ temperature efficiency, (t 2 ⫺t 1 )/(T 1 ⫺t 1 ) dimension-
less
S max ⫽ maximum value of S, defined by Eq. 共4兲
T1 ⫽ hot fluid inlet temperature, K
T2 ⫽ hot fluid outlet temperature, K
t1 ⫽ cold fluid inlet temperature, K
t2 ⫽ cold fluid outlet temperature, K
⌬T ⫽ actual mean temperature difference, K
XP ⫽ parameter defined by Ahmad et al., defined by Eq.
共5兲, dimensionless
Y ⫽ parameter defined by Eq. 共11兲, dimensionless
Appendix
Derivation of Expessions for Computing Number of Shells
Based on Temperature Cross. Here, the expressions for com-
puting number of shells based on temperature cross in an ex-
changer are developed and described.
Fig. 8 Effect of Y on number of shells, N for R Ä0.2
Start With the Following Definitions and Relationships.
冉冊 1/M
G⫽1⫺S 共 1⫹R 兲 (A1)
1⫹RG
W⫽ . (18) where
R⫹G
Equation 共17兲, used in conjunction with Eq. 共18兲, gives improved T 1 ⫺T 2 t 2 ⫺t 1
R⬅ and S⬅
Y 共i.e., Y ⬘ 兲 for integer number of shells M (⬎N). In fact, Y should t 2 ⫺t 1 T 1 ⫺t 1
be calculated at both (M -1) and M shells; in some cases, the
designer may find Y at (M -1) shells acceptable. This might es- 2
S max⫽ (A2)
sentially be the case while targeting for shells in heat exchanger R⫹1⫹ 冑R 2 ⫹1
networks, where rounding, say, 3.1 shells to 4 shells, may escalate
the total cost target. The designer may want to optimize between S⫽S max X P (A3)
‘‘three shells with a bit lower Y ’’ and ‘‘four shells with higher
Y ’’ on the basis of total cost targets. G⫽G min⫹Y (A4)
Nomenclature Estimating G min .
F T ⫽ LMTD correction factor, dimensionless G min⫽1⫺S max共 1⫹R 兲

(A5)
G ⫽ (T 2 ⫺t 2 )/(T 1 ⫺t 1 ), dimensionless
G min ⫽ minimum value of G, defined by Eq. 共10兲 2 共 1⫹R 兲冑R 2 ⫹1⫺R⫹1
G min⫽1⫺ ⫽
G N ⫽ value of G for N-pass exchanger 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
LMTD ⫽ log mean temperature difference, K
Estimating G at a Given Y. Assume a value of Y. For feasible
design, G⫽G min⫹Y.
Substituting Eq. 共A5兲 in Eq. 共A4兲,
冑R 2 ⫹1⫺R⫹1⫹Y 关冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 兴
G⫽
冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
(A6)
冑R 2
⫹1 共 1⫹Y 兲 ⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲共 1⫺Y 兲
G⫽
冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
Estimating S at a Given Y. From Eqs. 共A1兲 and 共A4兲,
G⫽1⫺S 共 1⫹R 兲 ⫽G min⫹Y
1⫺G min⫺Y 2 共 R⫹1 兲 ⫺Y 关冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 兴

S⫽ ⫽ (A7)
R⫹1 共 R⫹1 兲关冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 兴
2 Y Y
S⫽ ⫺ ⫽S max⫺ .
冑R 2
⫹1⫹R⫹1 R⫹1 R⫹1
Estimating G at Given X P . From Eqs. 共A1兲 and 共A4兲,
2X P 共 1⫹R 兲
G⫽1⫺S max X P 共 1⫹R 兲 ⫽1⫺
Fig. 9 Effect of Y on number of shells, N for R Ä1.0 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
(A8)
冑R 2 ⫹1⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲共 2X P ⫺1 兲 where
G⫽ .
冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 1⫺RS 1⫹RG
W⫽ ⫽
Relating X P to G. From Eqs. 共A1兲 and 共A3兲, 1⫺S R⫹G
(A17)
1⫺G 1⫹R 共 G min⫹Y 兲
S⫽S max X P ⫽ (A9) W⫽
1⫹R R⫹G min⫹Y
1⫺G 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
X P⫽
1⫹R 2
⫽
2 共 1⫹R 兲
共 1⫺G 兲 . 冑R 2 ⫹1 共 R⫹1⫹RY 兲 ⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲共 R⫺1⫺RY 兲
W⫽ . (A18)
冑R 2 ⫹1 共 R⫹1⫹Y 兲 ⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲共 R⫺1⫺Y 兲
Relating Y to X P . From Eqs. 共A1兲, 共A3兲, and 共A4兲,
G⫽1⫺S 共 R⫹1 兲 ⫽1⫺S max X P 共 R⫹1 兲 ⫽G min⫹Y If N is Rounded Off to Next Integer M (M⬎N), How Much Y is
Improved?
Y ⫽1⫺G min⫺S max X P 共 R⫹1 兲
⫽1⫺
冑R 2 ⫹1⫺ 共 R⫹1 兲
⫺
2X P 共 R⫹1 兲
(A10)
ln 冉 1⫹RG N
R⫹G N 冊
冑R ⫹1⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲冑R 2 ⫹1⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲
2 M⫽
ln W
冉冊
2 共 R⫹1 兲
Y⫽ 共 1⫺X P 兲 1 1⫹RG N
冑R 2
⫹1⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲 ln W⫽
M
ln
R⫹G N
(A19)
and
Y ⫽S max共 R⫹1 兲共 1⫺X P 兲 . (A11) W⫽ 冉 1⫹RG N
R⫹G N 冊 1/M
Relating X P to Y. From Eqs. 共A1兲, 共A3兲, and 共A4兲,

From Eq. 共A17兲, G 1 ⫽RW⫺1/R⫺W⫽G min⫹Y ⬘ where Y ⬘ is
1⫺G min⫺Y 共 R⫹1 兲共 2⫺Y 兲 ⫺Y 冑R 2 ⫹1 improved Y.
X P⫽ ⫽ (A12)
S max共 R⫹1 兲 2 共 R⫹1 兲
冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1 RW⫺1 RW⫺1 冑R 2 ⫹1⫺R⫹1
Y Y ⬘⫽ ⫺G min⫽ ⫺
X P ⫽1⫺ Y ⫽1⫺ . (A13) R⫺W R⫺W 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
2 共 R⫹1 兲 S max共 R⫹1 兲 (A20)
Relating N (Number of Shells) to Y. R⫺1 冑R 2 ⫹1 共 W⫺1 兲 ⫹ 共 R⫹1 兲共 W⫹1 兲
冉冊
Y ⬘⫽
1⫺
1⫺RS N
R⫺W 冑R 2 ⫹1⫹R⫹1
1⫺S
冉冊
S N⫽ N (A14) Eq. 共A20兲, used in conjuction with Eq. 共A19兲 gives improved Y
1⫺RS
R⫺ 共i.e., Y ⬘ 兲 for the integer number of shells M (⬎N).
1⫺S
where S is value of S for one shell and S N is value of S for the
N-shell exchanger. References
Inverting Eq. 共A14兲, 关1兴 Kern, D. Q., 1965, Process Heat Transfer, McGraw-Hill, New York.
ln 冉
1⫺RS N
1⫺S N 冊关2兴 Underwood, A. J. V., 1934, ‘‘The Calculation of the Mean Temperature Dif-
ference in Multipass Heat Exchangers,’’ J. Inst. Pet. Tech., 20, pp. 145–158.
关3兴 Bowman, R. A., Mueller, A. C., and Nagle, W. M., 1940, ‘‘Mean Temperature
冉冊
N⫽ , (A15) Difference in Design,’’ Trans. ASME, 62, pp. 283–293.
1⫺RS 关4兴 Walker, G., 1982, Industrial Heat Exchangers: A Basic Guide, Hemisphere,
ln Washington, D.C.
1⫺S
关5兴 Saunders, E. A. D., 1988, Heat Exchangers: Selection, Design and Construc-
since tion, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
关6兴 Gulyani, B. B., and Mohanty, B., 1995, ‘‘A Novel F T Plot for Shell and Tube
冉 1⫺RS
1⫺S
⫽
1⫹RG
R⫹G 冊
.
Heat Exchangers,’’ Res. Ind., 40, pp. 189–192.
关7兴 Ahmad, S., Linnhoff, B., and Smith, R., 1988, ‘‘Design of Multipass Heat
Exchangers: An Alternative Approach,’’ Trans. ASME, 110, pp. 304–309.
关8兴 Bell, K. J., 1983, Heat Exchanger Design Handbook, Vol. 3, Hemisphere,
Hence, Washington, D.C.
冉冊
关9兴 Frank, O., 1978, Practical Aspects of Heat Transfer, AIChE, New York.
1⫹RG N 关10兴 Wales, R. E., 1981, ‘‘Mean Temperature Difference in Heat Exchangers,’’
ln Chem. Eng., 88, pp. 77–81.
R⫹G N
N⫽ (A16) 关11兴 Gulyani, B. B., and Mohanty, B., 1996, ‘‘Estimating Log Mean Temperature
ln W Difference in Multipass Exchangers,’’ Chem. Eng., 103, No. 11, pp. 127–130.
Flow and Heat Transfer
Correlations for Porous Fin
S. Y. Kim1 in a Plate-Fin Heat Exchanger
e-mail: seoykim@kist.re.kr
Assoc. Mem. ASME The present experimental study investigates the impact of porous fins on the pressure drop
and heat transfer characteristics in plate-fin heat exchangers. Systematic experiments
J. W. Paek have been carried out in a simplified model of a plate-porous fin heat exchanger at a
controlled test environment. The porous fins are made of 6101 aluminum-alloy foam
B. H. Kang materials with different permeabilities and porosities. Comparison of performance be-
tween the porous fins and the conventional louvered fins has been made. The experimental
Thermal/Flow Control Research Center, results indicate that friction and heat transfer rate are significantly affected by perme-
Korea Institute of Science and Technology, ability as well as porosity of the porous fin. The porous fins used in the present study show
Seoul 130-650, Korea similar thermal performance to the conventional louvered fin. However, the louvered fin
shows a little better performance in terms of pressure drop. For compactness of the heat
exchanger, the porous fins with high pore density and low porosity are preferable. Useful
correlations for the friction factor and the modified j-factor are also given for the design
of a plate-porous fin heat exchanger. 关S0022-1481共00兲01103-8兴
Keywords: Experimental, Finned Surfaces, Heat Exchangers, Heat Transfer, Porous

Media
Introduction metal foaming 共关4兴兲. Therefore, it is expected that the overall per-
formance of plate-fin heat exchangers can be improved by using
Heat exchange processes are indispensable to modern thermal the porous fin.
engineering applications. On this account, tremendous studies on The literature surveyed reveals that much research on the po-
heat exchangers have been performed to enhance thermal trans- rous materials can be found, mainly in energy-related problems,
port between fluids during past several decades 共关1兴兲. Recent stud- which include the utilization of geothermal energy, the control of
ies have concentrated on the development of high-performance pollutant spread in ground water, high performance insulation,
compact heat exchangers to reduce energy consumption as well as etc. 共关5兴兲. Recently several papers have emphasized substantial
material cost. heat transfer enhancement by using porous inserts in a flow pas-
Various types of compact heat exchangers have been developed sage 共关6–11兴兲. However, efforts to get flow and heat transfer data
for specific applications. To exchange thermal energy between gas of the porous fin for the design of compact heat exchanger are not
and liquid especially, compact heat exchangers with extended sur- being accomplished.
faces in the gas-side, such as wavy fin, offset strip fin, and lou- In the present study, a simplified model of a plate-fin heat ex-
vered fin, are often utilized. Such fins substantially reduce the changer, as shown in Fig. 1, is selected to investigate the impact
gas-side thermal resistance, which always acts as the major factor of the porous fin on a plate-fin heat exchanger in detail. The
simplified model emulates one flow passage of a conventional
of degrading the performance of plate-fin heat exchangers.
plate-fin heat exchanger. A porous fin is placed inside a channel,
To date, the louvered fin is known to be the most efficient and in which two channel walls are maintained at a constant tempera-
effective surface geometry in view of enhanced heat transfer rate ture. The correlations of friction factor f and the j-factor for the
and it is being widely used in automotive and aircraft air-cooled porous fin will be sought to provide a design parameter for heat
heat exchangers 共关2,3兴兲. However, the manufacturing process of a exchangers. Further, we scrutinize the performance of the porous
louvered fin is rather complicated in that it requests a heavy fi- fin in a plate-fin heat exchanger, compared with that of the lou-
nancial investment for maintenance. Furthermore, the louvered fin vered fin.
has another potential disadvantage in structural strength since it is
made of a very thin aluminum sheet. Consequently, there has been
a demand for a new compact heat exchanger with fins that have a
high heat transfer rate, and structural strength as well as a simple
manufacturing process.
In an attempt to respond to the demand, we have focused on the
utilization of a porous metal fin in place of the conventional lou-
vered fin. The impetus is a high-surface-area-to-volume ratio as
well as enhanced flow mixing due to the tortuous path of the
porous fin. In addition, it has excellent characteristics in the struc-
tural strength as well as the simple manufacturing process of
1
To whom correspondence should be addressed. Thermal/Flow Control Research
Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 131, Cheongryang,
Seoul 130-650, Korea.
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, June 24,
1999; revision received, March 10, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: M. Hunt. Fig. 1 Schematic configuration of the problem
wall surface temperature. At steady state, the temperature devia-
tion along the hot walls was less than 0.2°C. All the channel walls
were thermally insulated.
To measure the inlet air temperature, three copper-constantan
thermocouples 共Omega AWG36兲 were used at 5 mm upstream of
the test section. Five copper-constantan thermocouples 共Omega
AWG36兲 were also horizontally distributed at 5 mm downstream
of the test section to measure the air temperature at the outlet. The
downstream air temperatures measured at the core region in the
channel were slightly lower than those at the wall region. For a
high flow rate, the maximum deviation between the thermo-
couples was about 6.2 percent. By averaging the temperatures
measured upstream and downstream of the test section, the overall
temperature rise of air was evaluated. The overall temperature rise
of air was varied from 20.4°C to 33.8°C according to the flow rate
and the specimen.
Experiments were started by inducing air flow to the channel
and by maintaining the water jackets at constant temperature after
installing the test specimen to the channel. The temperatures were
monitored during the heat-up time by a data acquisition system
共Yokogawa DR230兲. After reaching a thermal steady state, the
Fig. 2 Experimental apparatus temperature data were recorded on the storage device for data
analysis.
Experimental Apparatus and Test Procedure Test Specimen and Data Reduction
A schematic diagram of the experimental apparatus is shown in The test specimens used in the present study are porous fins
Fig. 2. The experiments were conducted in a channel fabricated of made of aluminum-alloy 6101 foam. The porous fins have three
Plexiglas of height H⫽9.0 mm and width W⫽90.0 mm. Test distinct pore densities, i.e., 10, 20, and 40 PPI 共pores per inch兲 at
specimens of aluminum-alloy porous fins were made of height the same porosity of ␧⫽0.92, and four different porosities, i.e.,
H⫽9.0 mm, W⫽90.0 mm, and length L⫽30.0 mm as depicted in ␧⫽0.89, 0.92, 0.94, and 0.96 at the same pore density of 20 PPI,
Fig. 2. Pressure taps were installed at 5 mm upstream and down- as described in Table 1. The surface-area-to-volume ratio ␤ of the
stream of the test section. The outlet of the channel was open to porous fin increases as the pore density 共PPI兲 increases or the
the atmosphere while the inlet was connected to a calming cham- porosity decreases. The permeability K of the porous fin gradually
ber in which the compressed air at 4 atm was induced through a decreases with an increase in the pore density due to the increased
rotameter. The rotameter was carefully calibrated by a bubble bulk friction. It is noted that permeability of the porous fin with 20
flow meter. Frontal air velocities U i tested in the present experi-
PPI is proportional to (1⫺␧) 2 , which shows a peak at ␧⫽0.94. It
ments ranged from 0.48 m/s to 3.64 m/s, and the corresponding
may be attributed to the change of microscopic pore shape accord-
Reynolds number based on the fin height H was ReH
ing to the porosity of the porous fins 共关12兴兲. The permeabilities of
⫽270– 2050. To measure the pressure drop through the test speci-
the porous fins were determined by using the Forchheimer-
men, the precision manometer 共Dywer Microtector 1430兲 with a
extended Darcy model after measuring the pressure drop through
resolution of 1/100 mm in water height was used.
the porous fin. The effective thermal conductivity of the present
Two hot-water jackets made of copper were mounted on both
porous fin is little affected by the change of pore density while it
side walls of the channel to provide a constant wall temperature
is linearly increased by the decrease of porosity 关13兴.
condition. The water circulation loop supplied hot water to the
The friction factor f and the modified j-factor j * are defined to
jackets, as seen in Fig. 2. The temperature difference between the
assess the pressure drop and the heat transfer rate of the fins:
wall surface and the inlet air was set at 35°C during the experi-
ments. The inlet air temperature was about 20°C. Three clamps Ac 2␳⌬ P
were used to reduce thermal contact resistance between the jacket f⫽ , (1)
A o G 2c
wall and the test specimen. As the compression loading of clamps
was increased, the outlet air temperature approached an ␩ s h 2/3
asymptotic value that was considered as a condition for minimal j *⫽ Pr ⫽ ␩ s j. (2)
G cC p
contact resistance. Three copper-constantan thermocouples
共Omega AWG36兲 were also inserted between the jacket wall and In Eq. 共1兲, the entrance and the exit loss coefficients are neglected
the surface of the test specimen to verify the uniformity of the 共关14兴兲. A c indicates the minimum free flow area, A c ⫽␧A, where A
Table 1 Test specimens of porous fins
Surface-area Effective
to-Volume Thermal
Pore Ratio Darcy Conductivity
Porous Density Porosity ␤ ⫽A o /V Permeability Number k e 共W/mK兲
Fin (PPI) ␧ 共m2/m3兲 K 共m2兲 Da⫽K/H 2 关13兴
1 10 0.92 790 2.36⫻10⫺7 2.85⫻10⫺3 5.33
2 20 0.92 1720 1.07⫻10⫺7 1.30⫻10⫺3 5.56
3 40 0.92 2740 7.15⫻10⫺8 8.63⫻10⫺4 6.01
4 20 0.89 2020 8.96⫻10⫺8 1.08⫻10⫺3 6.77
5 20 0.94 1510 1.30⫻10⫺7 1.57⫻10⫺3 4.27
6 20 0.96 1240 1.16⫻10⫺7 1.41⫻10⫺3 2.82
is the frontal area of the porous fin, A⫽WH. A o is the total heat sure drop and the mass velocity were, respectively, 2.8 percent
transfer area of porous fins, i.e., A o ⫽A f ⫹A b , where A f and A b and 1.5 percent at 95 percent confidence. Then, the uncertainty in
are the fin area and the base area, respectively. ␳ is the density and the friction factor was about 4.6 percent.
⌬ P the pressure drop through the fins. G c is the mass velocity, The uncertainty of the modified j-factor that can be derived
G c ⫽ ␳ U i , where U i is the frontal velocity. from Eq. 共7兲 is
冑冉 ␦ 冊冉 ␦ 冊冉 ␦ 冊冉冊
In Eq. 共2兲, the modified j-factor includes the surface efficiency
␩ s of the fin to compare the thermal performance of the porous fin ␦ j* ⌬T 2
⌬T m 2
Ao 2
2 ␦ Pr 2
⫽ ⫹ ⫹ ⫹ . (11)
with that of the conventional louvered fin. Since it is difficult to j* ⌬T ⌬T m Ao 3 Pr
evaluate the surface efficiency of the porous fin, we have multi-
At Re⫽1530, for example, the inlet, the outlet, and the wall tem-
plied the known value of the surface efficiency for the conven-
peratures were varied within ⫾0.08, 0.16, and 0.22°C at 95 per-
tional louvered fin to its j-factor correlation 共关15兴兲. The surface
cent confidence, respectively. Therefore, the uncertainties in ⌬T
efficiency ␩ s of the louvered fin is obtained from
and ⌬T m were, respectively, 0.6 percent and 2.0 percent in 95
Af percent confidence level. The uncertainty in the Prandtl number
␩ s ⫽1⫺ 共 1⫺ ␩ f 兲 . (3) ( ␦ Pr/Pr) was 0.7 percent. Consequently, the uncertainty in the
Ao modified j-factor was estimated by 2.4 percent.
The fin efficiency ␩ f is calculated from 共关16兴兲
Results and Discussion
tanh共 ml 兲
␩f⫽ , (4) Before presenting the results for the porous fins, it is necessary
ml to confirm the appropriateness of the experimental test model.
Thus, the benchmark test by using a conventional louvered fin has
where
been performed, and the friction and j-factor values experimen-
m⫽ 冑 2h
kt
. (5)
tally obtained were compared with the previous friction and
j-factor correlations for the louvered fins in Fig. 3 共关18,3,15兴兲. The
louvered fin used in the present benchmark test has a dimension of
Here, the fin length l is the half of the channel height defined by louver pitch L p ⫽1.0 mm, louver length L i ⫽8.0 mm, fin height
l⫽H/2⫺t. The t is the fin thickness and k the thermal conductiv- H⫽9.0 mm, fin pitch F p ⫽1.88 mm, flow depth F d ⫽26 mm, and
ity of fin. The calculated surface efficiency of the louvered fin fin thickness t⫽0.1 mm. Surface-area-to-volume ratio ␤ of the
used in the present study was in the range of 0.93–0.98. louvered fin is 1320 m2/m3.
The h denotes the convective heat transfer coefficient for the air In Fig. 3, the friction factors of the present louvered-fin model
side that is determined from the overall energy balance without are estimated to be comparable to the Achaichia and Cowell’s
considering contact thermal resistance: correlation 共关18兴兲 for ReLp⬎200. The correlation presented by
Chang et al. 关3兴 yields slightly lower values than the present lou-
G c C p A⌬T vered fin data. It may be attributed that the fin height of the lou-
␩ s h⫽U⫽ . (6) vered fins used in Chang et al. 关3兴 is about two times larger than
A o ⌬T m
the present louvered fin. However, the trend of the friction factors
In the present model of the porous fin, therefore, ␩ s h equals the according to the Reynolds number based on the louver pitch is
overall heat transfer coefficient U. Then, the modified j-factor very similar. The j-factors of the present louvered fin show a good
from Eq. 共2兲 is expressed as agreement with the correlation by Chang and Wang 关15兴. Conse-
quently, it is believed that the present experimental model for fins
A ⌬T 2/3 is satisfactory to estimate the fin performance of a plate-fin heat
j *⫽ Pr . (7)
A o ⌬T m exchanger with reasonable accuracy.
Figure 4 shows the friction factor f for the porous fins as a
In Eq. 共7兲, the temperature difference of air between the inlet and function of the Reynolds number. The Reynolds number is based
the outlet ⌬T and the logarithmic mean temperature difference on the fin height H and the porosity ␧ is 0.92. For comparison, the
共LMTD兲 ⌬T m are friction factor of the louvered fin tested in the present study is also
⌬T⫽T o ⫺T i , (8)
⌬T
⌬T m ⫽ , (9)
ln关共 T w ⫺T i 兲 / 共 T w ⫺T o 兲兴
where T i , T o , and T w denote, respectively, the air inlet, the air
outlet, and the wall temperatures.
The uncertainties in the present experimental results were esti-
mated by the single-sample experiment analysis described by
Kline and McClintock 共关17兴兲. The uncertainties for the friction
factor and the modified j-factor were mainly attributed to the
variation of temperature, velocity, pressure, and the thermophysi-
cal properties of fluid while the effect of geometric uncertainty of
the test section was meager. Therefore, the uncertainty of the fric-
tion factor can be expressed by
␦f
f
⫽ 冑冉 ␦ 冊冉 ␦ 冊冉 ␦ 冊冉 ␦ 冊冉
␧
␧ 2
⫹
␳
␳ 2
⫹
⌬P
⌬P
2
⫹
Ao
Ao
2
⫹ 2
␦Gc
Gc 冊 2
.
(10)
In Eq. 共10兲, the uncertainties of the porosity ␧ and the total surface
area A o were 1.1 percent. The density variation was generally less
than 1.5 percent because the friction factor was evaluated from the Fig. 3 Comparison of the friction and j -factors for the present
results of the cold-flow experiment. The uncertainties in the pres- louvered fin with the previous correlations
Fig. 6 Friction factor correlation of the porous fins
Fig. 4 Effect of pore density on the friction factors of the po-
rous fin at ␧ Ä0.92
To derive a correlation of friction factors for the porous fins, the

f data in Figs. 4 and 5 are converted by using the nondimensional
plotted in the figure. The friction factor f decreases gradually as parameters such as Da1/2, A c /A o and L/H, as demonstrated in
Re increases. The friction factor f of the high permeable porous fin Fig. 6. Then, it is found that the friction factors f for the porous
of 10 PPI is much higher than that of the lower permeable porous
fins. This is attributed to the relatively small surface area of the fins tested in the present study generally merge to a single curve
high permeable porous fin. It is also noted that the friction factor with maximum 15 percent deviation:
of the louvered fin is slightly higher than that of the porous fins at 2 Ac L 0.21 A c L
low Reynolds numbers. As ReH increases, however, the porous f⫽ ⫹ . (12)
fins are shown to have higher friction factors compared to the ReH •Da A o H Da1/2 A o H
louvered fin. Here, Da denotes the Darcy number K/H 2 . If the porous fin is
The effect of porosity variation of the porous fin on the friction considered as a local volume averaged continuous medium, the
factor is also displayed in Fig. 5. The pore density is fixed at 20 above definition of the friction factor can be expressed in terms of
PPI. The porous fin of high porosity ␧⫽0.96 shows a higher fric- the pressure drop in a smooth porous channel without fins. Rear-
tion factor. Although the dimensional pressure drop decreases ranging the above equation yields
with the increase of the porosity ␧⭓0.92 共关11兴兲, the friction factor
defined in Eq. 共1兲 increases due to the relatively rapid decrease in 共 ⌬ P/L 兲 H 1 0.105
the surface area. It is also noted that the porous fins of porosity ⫽ ⫹ . (13)
␳ U 2i Re•Da Da1/2
␧⬍0.96 have similar friction factors without displaying any
monotonic decrease. It is caused by nonlinear behavior of the It is interesting to note that Eq. 共13兲 is exactly the same as the
pressure drop 共permeability兲 according to the variation of poros- Forchheimer-extended Darcy model for porous media with an in-
ity, as mentioned in Table 1. ertia coefficient of C E ⫽0.105 共关5兴兲. In Eq. 共13兲, the inertia coef-
ficients C E of the present porous fins are slightly varied from
0.095 to 0.115 according to the pore density and the porosity of
the fin.
Now we shall deal with the modified j-factor to show the heat
transfer characteristics of the porous fins. Figure 7 displays the
effect of pore density on the modified j-factor j * of the porous
fins as a function of Reynolds number. The porosity is 0.92. As
ReH increases, the modified j-factors are decreased and the corre-
sponding convective heat transfer rates h are increased. This is in
accordance with the previous results by Huang and Vafai 关7兴,
Amiri and Vafai 关19兴, and Kim et al. 关11兴. The modified j-factors
are substantially pronounced as the pore density of the porous fin
becomes small. It is also observed that the modified j-factor of the
louvered fin used in the present study shows a similar value to that
of the porous fin with 10 PPI.
The effect of porosity of the porous fin on the modified j-factor
j * is also exhibited in Fig. 8. The pore density is fixed at 20 PPI.
The modified j-factor values of the porous fin with ␧⫽0.96 are
higher than those with lower porosity. For the fins of low porosity
␧⭐0.94, the modified j-factors show similar values. This may be
caused by the combined effect of the surface area and the effec-
tive thermal conductivity according to the change of the porosity
共see Table 1兲.
Fig. 5 Effect of porosity on the friction factors of the porous In an attempt to get a modified j-factor correlation of the porous
fin at 20 PPI fins, the nondimensional parameter, the Darcy number Da, is em-
Fig. 7 Effect of pore density on the modified j -factors of the Fig. 9 Modified j -factor correlation of the porous fins
porous fins at ␧ Ä0.92
ployed again. When the modified j-factor data in Figs. 7 and 8 are volume is expressed by ␩ s h ␤ . Here we should distinguish the
converted using this nondimensional parameter, the data merge to air-side performance from the aforementioned modified j-factor.
a single line in the log-log plot exhibited in Fig. 9. Then, it gives While the modified j-factor shows the heat transfer from a unit
a simple modified j-factor correlation with maximum 17 percent heat transfer surface, the air-side performance represents the total
deviation for 270⬍ReH⬍2050: heat transfer that can be obtained in a unit heat-exchanging vol-
ume. Therefore, the porous fin with low j-factors can show a high
j * ⫽13.73共 Re⫺0.489
H Da0.451兲 . (14) air-side performance when it has a high-surface-area-to-volume
The above equation implies that thermal performance of Al-alloy ratio. Also, the friction power consumption per a unit volume can
porous fins can be easily predicted from measuring permeability K be evaluated by 共关14兴兲
at a known flow rate. It should be noted here that the above U iA c⌬ P A o
modified j-factor correlation has similar functional relationship to E␤⫽ . (16)
Ao V
that for conventional heat exchangers 共关3兴兲:
Figure 10 delineates the air-side performance ␩ s h ␤ and friction
j * ⫽C 共 Rem ␭ n 兲 , (15) power E ␤ characteristics for the porous fins at ␧⫽0.92. The air-
where C denotes a constant and ␭ is the finning factor that reflects side performance ␩ s h ␤ of the porous fin increases with an in-
the flow geometry effects of the fin. Thus, it is obvious that the crease in the friction power E ␤ . As the pore density PPI in-
Darcy number Da in Eq. 共14兲 implicates the equivalent finning creases, the ␩ s h ␤ at the same friction power is pronounced. At a
factor of the porous fin in heat exchangers. low friction power range, the ␩ s h ␤ of the louvered fin is higher
Compactness of a heat exchanger is another important design than that of the porous fins. When the friction power exceeds
parameter. Therefore, the volume goodness factor will be consid- E ␤ ⬎103 , however, the ␩ s h ␤ of the porous fin with 40 PPI is
ered here. The air-side performance of the porous fin for a unit
Fig. 8 Effect of porosity on the modified j -factors of the po- Fig. 10 Effect of pore density on the air-side performance
rous fins at 20 PPI ␩ s h ␤ of the porous fins at ␧ Ä0.92
Nomenclature
A ⫽ frontal area of test specimen 共m2兲, A⫽WH
A b ⫽ heat transfer area at the base of porous fin 共m2兲, A b
⫽WL
A c ⫽ minimum free-flow area 共m2兲, A c ⫽␧A
A f ⫽ fin surface area of porous fin 共m2兲
A o ⫽ total heat transfer surface area of porous fin 共m2兲, A o
⫽A f ⫹A b
C p ⫽ specific heat at constant pressure 共J/kgK兲
Da ⫽ Darcy number, K/H 2
D h ⫽ hydraulic diameter 共m兲, 2H
E ⫽ friction power, Eq. 共16兲
f ⫽ friction factor, Eq. 共1兲
h ⫽ length-averaged heat transfer coefficient, Eq. 共3兲
共W/m2K兲
H ⫽ height of channel 共m兲
j ⫽ Colburn j-factor, j⫽(h/G c C p )Pr2/3
j * ⫽ modified j-factor, Eq. 共2兲
k ⫽ thermal conductivity of fin
K ⫽ permeability of porous fin 共m2兲
Fig. 11 Effect of porosity on the air-side performance ␩ s h ␤ of
the porous fins at 20 PPI
L ⫽ length of porous fin 共m兲
L p ⫽ louver pitch of louvered fin 共m兲
PPI ⫽ pores per inch
Pr ⫽ Prandtl number, ␯/␣
comparable to that of the louvered fin. Therefore, it may be more ReH ⫽ Reynolds number based on the fin height H, U i H/ ␯
beneficial to use the low permeable porous fin at the high-volume ReLp ⫽ Reynolds number based on the louver pitch of lou-
flow range. vered fin, U i L p / ␯
Influence of porosity of the porous fin on the air-side perfor- T i ⫽ inlet air temperature 共K兲
mance ␩ s h ␤ and the friction power consumption E ␤ is also de- T o ⫽ outlet air temperature 共K兲
picted in Fig. 11. As the porosity decreases for a fixed pore den- T w ⫽ wall temperature 共K兲
sity of 20 PPI, the ␩ s h ␤ of the porous fin increases. Therefore, it U i ⫽ frontal air velocity 共m/s兲
may be concluded that the porous fins with low permeability and W ⫽ width of channel 共m兲
low porosity are preferable in terms of the compactness of heat Greek Symbols
exchangers. ␤ ⫽ heat transfer surface area to volume ratio 共m2/m3兲,
A o /V
⌬ P ⫽ pressure drop of air flow 共Pa兲
Conclusion ⌬T ⫽ temperature difference of air between the inlet and the
An experimental investigation on the effect of porous fin in a outlet 共K兲, Eq. 共4兲
simplified model of plate-fin heat exchanger has been performed. ⌬T m ⫽ log mean temperature difference 共K兲, Eq. 共5兲
Six aluminum-alloy porous fins of various permeabilities and po- ␧ ⫽ porosity
rosities were selected to scrutinize the performance of porous fins ␳ ⫽ density of air 共kg/m3兲
for the application to plate-fin heat exchangers. Comparison of ␯ ⫽ kinematic viscosity 共m2/s兲
heat transfer and friction characteristics between the porous fins ␩ f ⫽ fin efficiency
and the conventional louvered fin was made. ␩ s ⫽ surface efficiency
Experimental results indicate that the friction factor is much
lower for low permeable porous fins due to relatively larger sur-
References
face area. The louvered fin exhibits slightly higher friction factor
values than that of the porous fins at low Reynolds numbers. 关1兴 Webb, R. L., 1994, Principles of Enhanced Heat Transfer, John Wiley and
Sons, New York.
When the Reynolds number is high, however, the porous fins 关2兴 Sahnoun, A., and Webb, R. L., 1992, ‘‘Prediction of Heat Transfer and Fric-
show much higher friction factors compared to the louvered fin. tion for the Louver Fin Geometry,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 114, pp. 893–
The modified j-factors of the porous fins decrease as the pore 900.
density increases or as the porosity decreases. It is noted that the 关3兴 Chang, Y.-J., Wang, C.-C., and Chang, W. J., 1994, ‘‘Heat Transfer and Flow
Characteristics of Automotive Brazed Aluminum Heat Exchangers,’’
present porous fins have a similar thermal performance compared ASHRAE Trans., 100, No. 2, pp. 643–652.
to the conventional louvered fin; however, the louvered fin shows 关4兴 Gibson, L. J., and Ashby, M. F., 1997, Cellular Solids, Cambridge University
a little better performance in terms of pressure drop. The friction Press, Cambridge, UK.
and heat transfer correlations for the porous fins have been ob- 关5兴 Kaviany, M., 1991, Principles of Heat Transfer in Porous Media, Springer-
Verlag, New York.
tained by employing the Darcy number, Da, and the geometrical 关6兴 Hunt, M. L., and Tien, C. L., 1988, ‘‘Effects of Thermal Dispersion on Forced
parameters such as A c /A o and L/H. It is also found that the Convection in Fibrous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 31, pp. 301–309.
porous fins with low permeability and low porosity are preferable 关7兴 Huang, P. C., and Vafai, K., 1993, ‘‘Flow and Heat Transfer Control Using a
to compactness of plate-porous fin heat exchangers. Porous Block Array Arrangement,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 36, pp. 4019–
4032.
关8兴 Huang, P. C., and Vafai, K., 1994, ‘‘Analysis of Forced Convection Enhance-
ment in a Channel Using Porous Blocks,’’ J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer, 8,
pp. 563–573.
Acknowledgment 关9兴 Hadim, A., 1994, ‘‘Forced Convection in a Porous Channel With Localized
This work was supported by a grant from the Critical Technol- Heat Sources,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 116, pp. 465–472.
关10兴 Sung, H. J., Kim, S. Y., and Hyun, J. M., 1995, ‘‘Forced Convection From an
ogy 21 Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Korea Isolated Heat Source in a Channel With Porous Medium,’’ Int. J. Heat Fluid
and Jang-Han Engineering, Inc. The support of test specimen Flow, 16, pp. 527–535.
from ERG, Inc. is deeply acknowledged by the authors. 关11兴 Kim, S. Y., Kim, J.-H., and Kang, B. H., 1998, ‘‘Effect of Porous Fin in a
Plate-Fin Heat Exchanger,’’ Proceedings of the ASME Heat Transfer Division, 关16兴 McQuiston, F. C., and Parker, J. D., 1994, Heating, Ventilating, and Air-
3, ASME, New York, pp. 477–482. Conditioning Analysis and Design, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
关12兴 ERG Duocel Aluminum Foam Catalog, 1995, Energy Research and Genera- 关17兴 Figliola, R. S., and Beasley, D. E., 1995, Theory and Design for Mechanical
tion, Inc. Oakland, CA.
Measurements, Wiley, New York.
关13兴 Paek, J. W., Kang, B. H., Kim, S. Y., and Hyun, J. M., 2000, ‘‘Effective
关18兴 Achaichia, A., and Cowell, T. A., 1988, ‘‘Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop
Thermal Conductivity and Permeability of Aluminum Foam Materials,’’ Int. J.
Thermophys., 21, pp. 453–464. Characteristics of Flat Tube and Louvered Plate Fin Surfaces,’’ Exp. Therm.
关14兴 Kays, W. M., and London, A. L., 1984, Compact Heat Exchangers, McGraw- Fluid Sci., 1, pp. 147–157.
Hill, New York. 关19兴 Amiri, A., and Vafai, K., 1994, ‘‘Analysis of Dispersion Effects and Non-
关15兴 Chang, Y.-J., and Wang, C.-C., 1997, ‘‘A Generalized Heat Transfer Correla- Thermal Equilibrium Non-Darcian, Variable Porosity Incompressible Flow
tion for Louver Fin Geometry,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 40, pp. 533–534. Through Porous Medium,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 37, pp. 939–954.
Optimization of Matrix Heat
K. Pavan Kumar
G. Venkatarathnam1
Exchanger Geometry
e-mail: gvenkat@acer.iitm.ernet.in
Matrix heat exchangers are used in a number of applications such as helium liquefiers,
sorption refrigerators, and in Kleemenko cryocoolers. In this paper the methods for the
Refrigeration and Airconditioning Laboratory,
optimum sizing of balanced flow and unbalanced flow matrix heat exchangers of rectan-
gular and circular shapes are presented. Using the methods developed, the relative size of
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,
matrix heat exchangers of rectangular and circular shapes are compared.
Chennai 600 036, India
关S0022-1481共00兲01503-6兴
Keywords: Cryogenics, Heat Exchangers, Heat Transfer, Optimization
1 Introduction to account for the the presence of low thermal conductivity spac-
ers in between the copper or aluminum plates. The perforated
Perforated plate matrix heat exchangers 共Fig. 1兲 were invented
plates were treated as fins to account for the thermal resistance of
in 1949 by McMahon et al. 关1兴 and are finding increasing use in
the plate. Sarangi and Barclay 关4兴 first showed that the attainable
the recently introduced Kleemenko 共mixed refrigerant cascade兲 effectiveness is a strong function of the number of plate-spacer
cryocoolers, as well as in very low temperature systems such as pairs in the heat exchanger. Their study clearly showed that the
sorption refrigerators and Helium II systems. A detailed descrip- matrix heat exchanger can be treated as a conventional heat ex-
tion of the chronological developments, the fabrication tech- changer only when the number of plate-spacer pairs is very large.
niques, and the heat transfer phenomenon in matrix heat ex- They, however, neglected the effect of lateral thermal resistance
changer has been presented by Venkatarathnam and Sarangi 关2兴. in the wall as well as the thermal resistance of perforated plates,
A matrix heat exchanger essentially consists of a stack of cop- which are both non-negligible in all practical matrix heat ex-
per perforated plates alternating with stainless steel or plastic changers. Most of the later workers have adopted the approach of
spacers. When bonded together they form a monolithic block with Sarangi and Barclay 关4兴 and have taken into account the effect of
leak free passages for two or more streams exchanging heat with a finite number of plate-spacer pairs while analyzing the steady
one another. The main purpose of the spacers is to decrease the state as well as the transient response of matrix heat exchangers.
longitudinal 共axial兲 heat conduction through the wall. The spacers Venkatarathnam 关5兴 presented an analytical expression for the
also serve to increase the convective heat transfer coefficients by effectiveness of a matrix heat exchanger in terms of the different
interrupting the flow. Matrix heat exchangers can be made of thermal resistances including the thermal resistance of the perfo-
many shapes. The most common are 共a兲 rectangular shape with rated plates and the effect of finite plate-spacer pairs as follows:
two passages shown in Fig. 1, 共b兲 circular shape with two or more
passages shown in Fig. 2, and 共c兲 rectangular shape with multiple NTUeff
passages, originally used by Fleming 关3兴 as shown in Fig. 3. ⑀⫽ 共 ␯ ⫽1 兲 (1)
NTUeff⫹1
1.1 Heat Transfer Phenomenon. The heat transfer be- 1⫺e ⫺NTUeff共 1⫺ ␯ 兲
tween the streams is essentially controlled by the following resis- ⑀⫽ 共 ␯ ⬍1 兲 (2)
tances: 1⫺ ␯ e ⫺NTUeff共 1⫺ ␯ 兲
where ␯ is the heat capacity rate ratio and NTUeff is the effective
• convective heat transfer resistance in the flow channels 共per-
number of heat transfer units and is defined for the balanced flow
forated plates兲
( ␯ ⫽1) and unbalanced flow ( ␯ ⬍1) cases as follows:
• conduction resistance offered by the perforated plates in ei-
ther flow channel NTUeff
• lateral conduction resistance offered by the plates
• longitudinal conduction resistance of all the walls of the ma- n 共 1⫺ ␣ 1 兲共 1⫺ ␣ 2 兲
⫽
trix heat exchanger n␭ 共 1⫺ ␣ 1 兲共 1⫺ ␣ 2 兲 ⫹1⫺ ␣ 1 ␣ 2 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ␣ 1 兲共 1⫺ ␣ 2 兲 /ntup,o
The convective heat transfer coefficients depend on a number 共 ␯ ⫽1 兲 (3)
of geometrical parameters such as the plate porosity, ratio of the
plate thickness to perforation diameter, ratio of the plate thickness n ln共 ␸ 兲
NTUeff⫽ 共 ␯ ⬍1 兲 (4)
to spacer thickness, alignment of perforations in adjacent plates, n␭ ln共 ␸ 兲 ⫹ ␯ ⫺1
and the type of perforations used 共circular holes, rectangular slits,
etc.兲. General convective heat transfer correlations that take into where ␸ is an intermediate variable, n is the number of plate
account all these effects are not yet available. Some authors have spacer pairs, ntu f is the number of heat transfer units per side, ␭ is
presented convective heat transfer correlations applicable for the axial conduction parameter of the walls, and ntup,o is the
some range of parameters, and for very specific cases 共see 关2兴兲. dimensionless conductance of the entire perforated plate forming
A number of methods have been developed during the last 50 the two flow channels and the wall and are defined as follows:
years to analyze the performance of matrix heat exchangers. In 1⫺ ␣ 1
most of the initial studies, the matrix heat exchanger was treated ␬ ⫹ ␣ 1⫹
ntup,o 1⫺ ␣ 1
as a conventional heat exchanger, but with the wall having differ- ␸⫽ ; ␬⫽ ␯;
ent thermal conductance in the lateral and longitudinal directions 1⫺ ␣ 1 1⫺ ␣ 2
1⫹ ␬␣ 2 ⫹
ntup,o
(5)
冉冊
1
Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF hA
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Divison, June 24, 1999; ␣ i ⫽exp共 ⫺ntu f ,i 兲 ; ntu f ,i ⫽
revision received, April 17, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: B. Chung.
ṁc p i
Fig. 3 Schematic of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular
geometry with multiple passages
Fig. 1 Schematic of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular
geometry with two passages
共␭兲, the number of plate-spacer pairs 共n兲, and the overall dimen-
sionless thermal conductance (ntup,o ) of the perforated plate are
k s A w /s 1 1 1 ␯ related as follows:
␭⫽ ; ⫽ ⫹ ⫹ . (6)
n 共 ṁc p 兲 1 ntup,o Fntup,1 ␭ p Fntup,2 2
n␭⫽ 共 ␯ ⫽1, ␭ p →⬁ 兲 . (7)
In the above expression F is a factor dependent on the geometry ntup,o
of the perforated plates. The expressions for the geometry factor F Balanced flow conditions ( ␯ ⫽1) will exist in matrix heat ex-
and ntup,i , the dimensionless conductance of the perforated plate changers used in cryorefrigerators operating with helium only
in the ith channel, and ␭ p , the lateral dimensionless conductance when the operating temperature lies between 300K and 80K and
of the separating wall for rectangular, circular, and annular geom- when the flow rates of the two streams are equal. At lower tem-
etries are given in Tables 1 and 2. peratures, however, the flow will be unbalanced even when the
Though a number of workers analyzed the performance of ma- flow rates of the two streams are equal because of the variation of
trix heat exchangers, very few studies are available on the design specific heat of helium with pressure. The flow will also be un-
共sizing兲 of matrix heat exchangers. Recently, Venkatarathnam 关6兴 balanced in many matrix heat exchangers used in Kleemenko
presented a method for the optimum sizing of a two-channel ma- cryocoolers operating with a mixture of gases. There is a need for
trix heat exchanger of rectangular geometry with balanced flow design methods for balanced and unbalanced cases as well as for
condition ( ␯ ⫽1). The study was based on the assumption that the matrix heat exchangers of circular shape, and to account the dif-
lateral thermal resistance (1/␭ p ) of the wall is negligible com- ferent resistances neglected in reference 关6兴, which are non-
pared to that of the perforated plate in either channel (1/ntup,i ). negligible in most practical matrix heat exchangers.
Also the longitudinal heat conduction through the wall separating The main aim of this paper is to derive comprehensive methods
the two streams was only taken account in the analysis. Longitu- for the optimum sizing of matrix heat exchangers of rectangular
dinal conduction through the walls separating the fluid from the and circular shapes taking into account all the thermal resistances
environment was not considered in that analysis. With the above and to compare the sizes of matrix heat exchanger of circular and
assumptions, Venkatarathnam 关6兴 showed that for an optimum
design, the overall longitudinal 共axial兲 heat conduction parameter
Table 1 Expressions for the dimensionless plate conductance
„ntup … and geometry factor F.
Shape ntup F
Rectangular (Wlk)/(Hṁc p ) 3
Circular ( ␲ lk)/(ṁc p ) 8
Annular ( ␲ lk)/(ṁc p ) 共共R2o⫺R2i 兲2兲/ 冉 R2oR2i

2
3 1 R4o Ro
⫺ R4o⫺ R4i ⫹ ln
8 8 2 Ri
冊
Table 2 Expressions for ␭ and ␭ p
Parameter ␭ ␭p
ks,b共3W⫹2H1⫹2H2⫹6b兲 kplW
Rectangular
共two channel兲 sn共ṁcp兲1 b共ṁcp兲1
2kpl␲
冉冊
ks,␲b共R j⫹Ro兲
Circular 2 Ri⫹b
sn共ṁcp兲1 共ṁcp兲1 ln
Fig. 2 Schematic of a matrix heat exchanger of circular Ri
geometry
rectangular shape for meeting required heat transfer and pressure G 2d
drop constraints. In the case of matrix heat exchanger of circular ⌬ P⫽n ␰ (12)
geometry, it is not clearly known whether the inner 共circular兲 or ␳
outer 共annular兲 channel needs to be chosen for the low pressure where ␰ is the drag coefficient which has been found to be gener-
stream so that the overall volume is minimized. Authors from the ally independent of Re for Re⬎160 and weakly dependent on Re
former Soviet Union have shown a preference for the circular for Re⬍160 共关7,8兴兲. In the above expression, G d is the mass flux
shape, whereas those in other parts of the world have predomi- through any perforation and ␳ is the density of the fluid.
nantly preferred the rectangular shape. A comparison of volumes
of matrix heat exchangers of rectangular shape with two and three 2.1 Assumptions. The optimization problem is based on the
channels and a matrix heat exchanger of circular shape is not following assumptions:
available in the open literature. This problem is also addressed in
1 The number of plates in the exchanger is large and can be
this paper.
treated as a continuous variable.
2 The heat exchanger will be designed such that the allowable
2 Optimum Sizing of Matrix Heat Exchangers pressure drop on the low-pressure side is utilized fully.
3 The thermophysical properties do not vary along the length
The design of a perforated plate matrix heat exchanger essen- of the heat exchanger.
tially consists of choosing the following:
• a heat transfer surface 共type of perforation, porosity 共p兲, plate
thickness 共l兲 and spacer thickness 共s兲兲. 3 Optimization Procedure
• overall dimensions such as the heat exchanger width 共W兲, the
It is customary to use dimensional variables such as length,
height of the plate in each channel (H 1 ,H 2 ) in the case of rect-
width, or height of the heat exchanger in all optimization studies.
angular plates, and the diameter or radius of the different channels
On the other hand, most analytical and experimental results are
(R o ,R i ) in the case of circular plates, as well as the number of
presented in terms of dimensionless variables or groups. In order
plate-spacer pairs 共n兲 to be used. These dimensions are illustrated
to use the information generated in analytical studies, it is benefi-
in Figs. 1 and 2.
cial to convert the dimensional variables of the optimization study
In this work the methods for the selection of overall dimen- into dimensionless variables. Following Venkatarathnam 关6兴, di-
sions, width, height in the case of a matrix heat exchanger of mensionless variables ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 , and ntup,1 are used in the
rectangular shape, or outer and inner radius in the case of a matrix place of width and height of the plate in each of the fluid flow
heat exchanger of circular shape are derived for a given surface. channels in the case of a rectangular shape matrix heat exchanger.
Also, the criteria for the choice of a particular geometry is In the case of a matrix heat exchanger of circular shape,
discussed. ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 are used as the variables of the optimization study.
The volume 共mass兲 of a matrix heat exchanger affects the per- There are several advantages in using dimensionless groups as
formance of a heat exchanger in three different ways: design variables instead of dimensional variables such as width,
height, etc.
1 A large volume will result in an increased heat leak from the
ambient and hence result in a lower effectiveness. • It may be possible to derive closed-form analytical relation-
2 A large volume 共mass兲 also increases the cool-down time ships between different dimensionless groups.
considerably. • Realistic starting points can be used in optimization studies,
3 A large volume will also necessitate a larger refrigerant based on prior analytical and experimental studies.
charge in the system, particularly in the case of Kleemenko cryo- • Certain limits can be imposed for the dimensionless variables
coolers in which the fluids undergo a phase change in the heat based on earlier studies, or to satisfy mathematical or physical
exchanger. limits. For example, the fin efficiency ␩ will vary between 0 and
1, ntu f ,i between 0 and 2 共关5兴兲, etc. It is difficult to impose similar
It is therefore necessary to design cryogenic heat exchangers limits on dimensional variables such as length, height, or width.
for minimum volume. In optimization studies the function that is This approach is particularly helpful when a new type of heat
minimized or maximized is normally termed as the objective exchanger design is being optimized or the designer is somewhat
function. In the case of the matrix heat exchanger, the design inexperienced and lacks a feel for the physical size of the heat
should also meet the requirements of heat load 共effectiveness兲 as exchanger that may be required to meet a given heat duty.
well as pressure drop requirements. These are normally termed as
constraints. The optimization problem can be expressed math- The procedure followed for the optimization of matrix heat ex-
ematically as follows: changers consists of the following broad steps:
Objective Function 1 expression of the design variables in terms of relevant di-
mensionless variables/groups.
Minimize 共Volume兲 or min关 n 共 W⫹2b 兲共 H 1 ⫹H 2 ⫹3b 兲兴 2 expression of the objective function 共volume兲 and constraints
共 rectangular兲 (8) 共pressure drop, and effectiveness required兲 in terms of di-
mensionless groups.
or min关 n 共 R o ⫹b 兲 2 兴共 circular兲 (9) 3 formulation of the Lagrangian equations and solution of the
equations to derive algebraic relationships between the dif-
The dimensions W, H 1 , H 2 , b, and R o are shown in Figs. 1 and 2.
ferent parameters.
Constraints
⑀ ⫽ ⑀ 共 specified兲 (10) 3.1 Optimization of a Matrix Heat Exchanger of Rectan-
gular Geometry. The dimensionless plate conductance param-
⌬ P⭐⌬ P 共 allowable兲 (11) eter ntup,i and the number of heat transfer units per plate ntu f ,i are
Normally the pressure drop of the low-pressure stream is more dependent on the plate width 共W兲 and the plate height in each
critical than that on the high-pressure stream in most cryogenic channel (H i ) as follows:
heat exchangers including the matrix heat exchanger. The pres-
sure drop is a function of the number of plates 共n兲 and can be
determined using the following expression 共关2兴兲:
ntup,i ⫽ 冉冊
k p Wl
Hṁc p i
ntu f ,i ⫽ 冉 hA ⵮ WHl
ṁc p 冊 i
. (13)
In the above expression the heat transfer coefficient 共h兲 is deter- ⌬ P ␳␲ 2 p 2 ⍀ 21
2␤
mined using the expression n⫽Kntu f ,1 1 with K⫽ . (23)
␰ ṁ 2
␥
Nu⫽C Re 共 C and ␥ function of surface geometry兲 .
As in the case of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular shape,
(14)
the objective function 共volume兲 as well as other parameters such
Using the above definitions of ntup,i and ntu f ,i , the dimensional as ntup,o ,␭,␭ p can all be expressed in terms of the dimensionless
design variables H i and W can be expressed as follows: design variables ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 using the Eqs. 共20兲, 共21兲, and
0.5␤ i 共23兲.
W⫽ 共 ␻ i ␺ i 兲 0.5ntu0.5
p,i ntu f ,i 共 i⫽1,2兲 (15)
冉冊
␤
␻1 0.5
0.5␤ 1 ␻2 ntu f ,22
H 1⫽ ntu⫺0.5
p,1 ntu f ,1 H 2⫽ ntu⫺0.5
0.5␤
4 Solution Procedure
␺1 共 ␻ 1 ␺ 1 兲 0.5 p,1
ntu f ,1 1
The design problem can now be fully expressed in terms of
(16) dimensionless parameters namely ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 , and ntup,1 in the
where ␤ i , ␻ i , and ␺ i are dimensionless constants made up of case of rectangular geometry and ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 in the case of cir-
surface characteristics and thermophysical constants and mass cular geometry. The constrained optimization problem can be
flow rate as follows: converted to an unconstrained one by the Lagrangian multiplier
冉冊冋冉冊冉冊册冉冊
␥ ␤i technique and a new objective function 共L兲 can be defined as
1 ṁc p d p␮ ṁc p follows:
␤ i⫽ ␻ i⫽ ␺ i⫽ .
1⫺ ␥ i A ⵮ lk f C ṁd k pl
i i L⫽V⫹Z 共 ⑀ ⫺ ⑀ specified兲 . (24)
(17)
In the above expression Z is a constant, and ⑀ specified is the effec-
The pressure drop in matrix heat exchangers is a strong func-
tiveness required and is specified to the designer. The necessary
tion of the number of plate-spacer pairs. Assuming that the allow-
conditions for optimum to exist for rectangular and circular ge-
able pressure drop on the low-pressure side is fully utilized, the
ometries are as follows:
number of plate-spacer pairs can be expressed in terms of the
design variable ntu f ,1 using Eqs. 共12兲, 共15兲, and 共16兲 as follows: ⳵L ⳵L ⳵L ⳵L
冉冊
⫽0 ⫽0 ⫽0 ⫽0 共 rectangular兲
⌬ P␳ ⌬ P␳1p 2
␻ 21 ⳵ ntu f ,1 ⳵ ntu f ,2 ⳵ ntup,1 ⳵Z
2␤
n⫽ ⫽Kntu f ,1 1 K⫽ . (18) (25)
␰ G 2d ␰ ṁ 2
⳵L ⳵L ⳵L
K is independent of Reynolds number 共Re兲 or the design variable ⫽0 ⫽0 ⫽0 共 circular兲 . (26)
ntu f in the turbulent flow regime but is function of ntu f in the case ⳵ ntu f ,1 ⳵ ntu f ,2 ⳵Z
of laminar flow since ␰ is a function of the Reynolds number Re.
4.1 Solution of the Optimization Problem for a Matrix
The exact definition of K in laminar flow regime will depend on
Heat Exchanger of Rectangular Geometry. The optimization
the particular ␰ correlation used.
problem can be solved only by a numerical solution of all the
The objective function, namely, volume 共Eq. 共8兲兲 as well as
equations that result from expressions in Eqs. 共25兲 and 共26兲. How-
other parameters such as ntup,o ,␭,␭ p can all be expressed in
ever, some analytical solutions can be obtained relating the differ-
terms of the dimensionless design variables using Eqs. 共15兲 and
ent parameters from one of the conditions.
共16兲.
4.1.1 Balanced Flow ( ␯ ⫽1). One of the conditions for the
3.2 Optimization of a Matrix Heat Exchanger of Circular optimum to exist, ( ⳵ L/ ⳵ ntup,1)⫽0 共Eq. 共25兲兲, essentially reduces
Geometry. The major dimensions of a matrix heat exchanger of to the following expression in the case of a balanced flow ( ␯
circular shape are the outer radius (R o ) of the heat exchanger and ⫽1) condition:
the radius of the annular channel (R i ). In the case of circular
geometry, the number of heat transfer units per side (ntu f ,i ) and
the dimensionless plate conductance parameter (ntup,i ) are de-
fined as follows:
⳵
冉
⳵ ntup,1
n␭⫹
1
ntup,o
⫽0. 冊 (27)
Substitution of expressions for ␭ and ntup,o 共based on total foot

␲ lk p hA ⵮ ␲ R 2i l print area of the spacer, see Table 2兲 into the above equation
ntup,i ⫽ ; ntu f ,1⫽ ;
ṁc p 共 ṁc p 兲 1 yields the following:
ntu f ,2⫽
hA ⵮ ␲ 共 R 2o ⫺ 共 R i ⫹b 兲 2 兲 l
共 ṁc p 兲 2
. (19) n␭ opt⫽
2 1
⫺ ⫹
k sb
2
ntup,o ␭ p sn 共 ṁc p 兲 1 i⫽1 冋兺冉冊
2
␻i
␺i
0.5
ntu⫺0.5
0.5␤ i
p,i ntu f ,i 册 .
Using the above definitions of ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 , the dimensional (28)
design variables R i and R o can be expressed in terms of dimen- When the width of the heat exchanger is much larger than the
sionless design variables as follows: plate height (H i ⰆW), Eq. 共28兲 reduces to the following expres-
0.5␤ 1 sion:
R i ⫽⍀ 0.5
1 ntu f ,1 (20)
2 1
R 2o ⫽⍀ 1 ntu f ,11 ⫹⍀ 2 ntu f ,22 ⫹2b 冑⍀ 1 ntu f ,11 ⫹b 2 n␭ opt⫽ ⫺ 共 WⰇH i 兲 .
␤ ␤ ␤ (29)
(21) ntup,o ␭ p
where ⍀ 1 and ⍀ 2 are dimensionless constants made up of ther- If the lateral thermal conductance of the wall is assumed to be
mophysical constants, surface characteristics, and mass flow rates infinity (␭ p →⬁) as in Ref. 关6兴, then Eq. 共28兲 will reduce to that
as follows: derived in Ref. 关6兴:
⍀ i⫽ 冋冉 ṁc p d
␲ A ⵮ lk f C i 冊冉冊册
␲p␮
ṁd
␥i ␤i
i
共 i⫽1,2兲 . (22) n␭ opt⫽
2
ntup,o
共 WⰇH i , ␭ p →⬁ 兲 . (30)
As in the case of rectangular geometry, the number of plates 共n兲 4.1.2 Unbalanced Flow ( ␯ ⬍1). Solution of the equation
can be expressed in terms of the pressure drop constraint as fol- ( ⳵ L/ ⳵ ntup,1)⫽0 will yield the following expression in the case of
lows: unbalanced flow heat exchangers:
Table 3 Heat transfer and friction factor correlations for a per-
forated plate matrix heat exchanger
StPr1/3⫽C Ren 300⬍Re⬍3000

C⫽0.00036((1⫺ p) p⫺0.2) ⫺2.07 0.3⬍p⬍0.6
n⫽⫺4.36* 10⫺2 * p ⫺2.34 Ref. 关8兴
␰ ⫽16.34 Re⫺0.55␰ sim Re⬍160
␰ ⫽ ␰ sim Re⬎160
␰ sim⫽(1.707⫺p) 2 /2 Ref. 关8兴
solutions, one corresponds to a very high value of ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2

and another to ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 between 0 and 2. Since the volume
is directly proportional to ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 , the later solution set
should be adopted. Also, analytical and numerical studies of Ven-
katarathnam 关5兴 and Venkatarathnam and Sarangi 关9兴 confirm that
Fig. 4 Variation of ⌫ with ntuf , i
the maximum value of ntu f will be less than 2 for most cases of
rectangular geometry. Analytical and numerical studies under-
taken by us show that the maximum value of ntu f would be less
than 4.5 in the case of a matrix heat exchanger of circular geom-
冉冊
etry. Using this information the search space for ntu f and ntup can
2 1 be reduced to a very narrow margin of 0 to 5. With this procedure
n␭ opt⫽ ⫺ ⌫ 共 WⰇH i 兲 (31)
ntup,o ␭ p there is no need to check for the other solution set.
We have used the Newton-Raphson method to successfully ar-
where ⌫ is a function of the heat capacity rate ratio 共␯兲 and other rive at the solution for a large variety of problems with starting
design variables as follows: values of ntu f ,1⫽ntu f ,2⫽ntup,1⫽1. In the case of a matrix heat
⌫⫽ 冋册
1 1⫺ ␸ 2
␸ ln ␸
. (32)
exchanger of circular geometry, the starting values used are
ntu f ,1⫽ntu f ,2⫽1.
The main strength of the procedure presented above lies in the
Figure 4 shows the variation of ⌫ with ntu f , ␩ fin and ␯. In order expression of the volume V and the effectiveness ⑀ in terms of the
to simplify the analysis it was assumed that ntu f ,1⫽ntu f ,2⫽ntu f dimensionless design variables ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 and ntup,1
and ntup,1⫽ntup,2⫽ntup 共equal thermal resistance in two chan- analytically.
nels兲. The equivalent fin efficiency was evaluated using the ex- Equations 共25兲 and 共26兲 turn out to be long and complex. How-
pression derived by Fleming 关3兴, ever, using a modern mathematical program such as Maple, Math-
ematica, or Mathcad, one can obtain the final solutions directly,
1 without expanding Eqs. 共25兲 and 共26兲. The whole procedure can
␩ fin⫽ . (33)
ntu f be programmed in Maple or Mathematica in about 20 to 40 lines.
1⫹ The method for sizing of a matrix heat exchanger can now be
3ntup
summarized as follows:
It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the maximum ⌫ will be close to 1
even under extreme design conditions. Therefore, for all practical Rectangular Geometry
purposes, Eq. 共28兲 can be used even for unbalanced flow ( ␯ ⬍1)
• Express W and H i in terms of ntu f ,i and ntup,i using Eqs. 共15兲
conditions. Substitution of Eq. 共28兲 into Eqs. 共3兲 and 共4兲 will
and 共16兲.
result in expressions for the effectiveness of optimum rectangular
• Replace W and H i in all other expressions (␭,␭ p ,ntup,o ) with
configurations.
expressions given in Eqs. 共15兲 and 共16兲.
It can be easily shown using the L’Hospital rule that Eq. 共31兲
• Solve Eqs. 共25兲 simultaneously by Newton-Raphson tech-
will reduce to Eq. 共29兲 when ( ␯ ⫽1). For any given plate cross
nique with starting points ntu f ,1⫽ntu f ,2⫽ntup,1⫽1.
section (A⫽W * H), an increase in width will result in an increase
in longitudinal heat conduction, but a decrease in plate conduction Circular Geometry
resistance 共due to decrease in plate height兲. Equations 共29兲 and
共31兲 express the ratio of longitudinal and lateral resistances of the • Express R i and R o in terms of ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 using Eqs. 共20兲
wall that must be maintained for achieving highest effectiveness and 共21兲.
共for a given area兲 or lowest plate area 共volume兲 for a required • Replace R i and R o in all other expressions (␭,␭ p ,ntup,o )
effectiveness. In the case of circular geometry, the lateral heat with expressions given in Eqs. 共20兲 and 共21兲.
transfer path between the streams is fixed by the diameter 共area兲 • Solve Eqs. 共26兲 simultaneously by the Newton-Raphson tech-
of the plate used, and these two cannot be varied independently as nique with starting points ntu f ,1⫽ntu f ,2⫽1.
in rectangular geometry. Closed-form solutions have become pos-
sible in the case of rectangular geometry only because of the
dimensionless approach adopted for the optimum study. 5 Results and Discussion
In most practical heat exchangers the aspect ratio is quite high, The optimum size of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular and
and the longitudinal heat conduction through the outer walls in the circular geometry was determined for different operating condi-
lateral heat transfer path (area⫽2b(h 1 ⫹h 2 )) is much smaller tions 共␯, NTUeff , and ⌬ P兲 encountered in a typical helium lique-
compared to that through the walls that separate the streams and fier, using the methods discussed above. The design constants,
those parallel to it (area⫽3Wb). Equations 共29兲 and 共31兲 can heat transfer, and flow friction correlations used in our study are
therefore be used without much loss of accuracy for most matrix given in Tables 3 and 4. All the results presented in this section
heat exchangers. have been obtained by using the methods presented in this paper
As with any nonlinear equation set, multiple solutions can exist and are optimum values. The computations were performed using
for the given problem. The correct solution of ntu f ,1 and ntu f ,2 is the Newton-Raphson method with a convergence criteria of
that which will result in the least volume. In general, three sets of 1.0e-5 for different dimensionless parameters which are normally
ntu f ,1 , ntu f ,2 , and ntup,1 satisfy Eqs. 共25兲. Of the two positive in the range of 0 and 5.
Table 4 Design constants adopted
Variable Value
Perforation diameter 0.5 mm
Thickness of perforated plate 1 mm
Thickness of separator 1 mm
Plate porosity 0.3
Density of helium in cold channel 0.48 kg/m3
Density of helium in hot channel 4.72 kg/m3
Thermal conductivity of plate material 200 W/共mK兲
Thermal conductivity of spacer material 12 W/共mK兲
Effective thermal conductivity of He 118.5 mW/共mK兲
Specific heat of helium 5.26 kJ/共kg K兲
Viscosity of He 15 ␮Pas
The effectiveness of a high effectiveness heat exchanger such

as a matrix heat exchanger will be less than that predicted using
commonly used ⑀-NTU relationships because of irreversibilities Fig. 6 Variation of heat exchanger volume with NTUeff for rect-
such as longitudinal heat conduction, effect of finite number of angular „two-channel and multiple-channel… shape matrix heat
plate-spacer pairs, etc. An effective NTU (NTUeff) can be defined exchanger with balanced flow conditions
taking into account all the irreversibilities 共Eqs. 共1兲–共4兲兲.
The effective NTU is thus the equivalent number of heat trans-
fer units of a conventional heat exchanger without any irrevers- channel heat exchanger is much lower than a corresponding two-
ibilities which has the same effectiveness as that of a matrix heat channel heat exchanger, particularly at low allowable pressure
exchanger with different irreversibilities under consideration. The drops. When the allowable pressure drop is high 共⬎2000 Pa兲, and
NTUeff helps in the comparison of heat exchangers subjected to the effectiveness is less than about 95 percent, the volume of a
different irreversibilities as well as those not subjected to different matrix heat exchanger in the two cases is nearly the same. The
irreversibilities on a common denominator basis. major advantage in using multiple channels, however, lies in the
The volumes of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular 共two- overall aspect ratio 共width to breadth兲 of the heat exchanger. It can
channel兲 and circular geometries for the same heat duty are com- be seen from Fig. 7 that the aspect ratio for a multichannel heat
pared in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the volume of a matrix heat exchanger has a ball park value of 4, compared to about 14 for
exchanger of circular shape is also dependent on the channel used two-channel rectangular matrix heat exchangers.
for the low-pressure stream as shown in Fig. 5. It is evident that Figure 8 shows the effect of height of separating wall 共b兲. It can
the use of inner 共circular兲 channel is preferable to the use of an- be seen that the volume of a matrix heat exchanger nearly doubles
nular channel for the low-pressure stream. The least volume is by increasing the spacer width from 1 mm to 2 mm, at all values
required when the rectangular two-channel matrix heat exchanger of NTUeff . Any increase in the width of the separating wall b 共see
is adopted at all effectiveness (NTUeff) conditions. The difference Fig. 1兲 will result in an increase in lateral thermal resistance be-
between volumes of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular and tween the streams as well as a decrease in the longitudinal thermal
circular shapes, however, is small for NTUeff , less than 20 共or resistance and will require therefore higher volume 共area兲. In most
effectiveness less than about 95 percent兲. matrix heat exchangers, the effect of increase in longitudinal heat
Figure 6 shows the volumes of an optimum matrix heat ex- conduction is more predominant than a decrease in lateral thermal
changer of rectangular shape with two and three channels 共Figs. 1 conductance. The value of b adopted, in general, depends on ef-
and 3兲. The size of the three-channel heat exchanger can be de- fectiveness of the bonding between the spacers and the perforated
termined by assuming it to be two two-channel heat exchangers in plates and the bonding strength. Figure 8 is thus an indirect indi-
parallel, but with the advantage of having one outer wall less cator of the relationship between the effectiveness of the bonding
共because of symmetry兲 compared to a normal two-channel heat and the overall volume of the matrix heat exchanger.
exchanger. It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the volume of multi- Figure 9 shows the variation of radii of the two channels of a
matrix heat exchanger of circular geometry for two cases 共C1 and
C2兲. In case C1 a much smaller flow cross section is provided for
Fig. 5 Effect of the matrix heat exchanger geometry on the

heat exchanger volume. „R: rectangular, C1: circular geometry
with low-pressure stream in the inner channel, C2: circular ge- Fig. 7 Variation of an aspect ratio with NTUeff for a rectangular
ometry with low-pressure stream in the annular channel.… shape matrix heat exchanger with balanced flow conditions
Fig. 8 Variation of volume „ V … with NTUeff for a rectangular
Fig. 10 Variation of Reynolds number in a low-pressure chan-
matrix heat exchanger at different values of separator thick-
nel and high-pressure channel with NTUeff for a rectangular
ness „ b …
shape matrix heat enchanger with balanced flow conditions
the high-pressure stream compared to the low-pressure stream.

When the low-pressure stream is passed through the annular chan- 6 Conclusions
nel 共case C2兲, the flow cross section and also convective heat
transfer area available for the high-pressure stream is much higher • The volume of a matrix heat exchanger of rectangular 共two
than that for case C1. The lateral heat transfer path, however, is channel兲 and circular geometry are quite close at NTUeff less than
also longer in case C2 compared to case C1. Consequently, the 15. At higher values of NTUeff the volume of a matrix heat ex-
conduction resistance in case C2 will be much larger than case changer of rectangular 共multi channel兲 geometry will be much
C1. The increase in conduction resistance will be much larger lower than all other configurations.
than increase in convective heat transfer area in case C2 compared • It is preferable to use the inner channel for the low pressure
to case C1, necessitating use of larger heat exchanger volume. stream and the annular channel for the high-pressure stream, in
Figure 10 shows the variation of Reynolds numbers of high and the case of a matrix heat exchanger of circular geometry.
low-pressure streams in a two-channel rectangular shape matrix • The low-pressure stream is more likely to operate in a lami-
heat exchanger. It can be seen that the Reynolds numbers are nar flow regime, particularly at high effectiveness in an all opti-
higher than 160 共corresponding to a turbulent regime 共关8兴兲兲 at all mum matrix heat exchanger, and in a turbulent flow regime in the
values of NTUeff and ⌬ P in the case of high-pressure stream and case of a high-pressure stream.
much less than Re of 160 for the low-pressure stream. A similar
observation can also be made in the case of matrix heat exchang- Nomenclature
ers of circular geometry. While the results show that laminar flow
regime will exist in the low-pressure channel of optimized matrix A ⫽ heat transfer area 共m兲
heat exchangers, very little data are available on the variation of A⵮ ⫽ heat transfer area per unit volume of plate 共m2/m3兲
Nusselt number 共Nu兲 at such low Reynolds numbers. Shevykova Aw ⫽ foot print area of the spacer 共m2兲
and Orlov 关8兴 presented a correlation for the friction factor for b ⫽ height of the separator 共m兲
laminar flow regime, but not for heat transfer. Even in our case, C ⫽ constant in Nusselt number correlation 共Eq. 共14兲兲
we have extended the correlation of Shevykova and Orlov 关8兴 to d ⫽ perforation diameter 共m兲
low Reynolds number, even though they are valid only at Re F ⫽ geometric factor 共Eq. 共6兲兲
⬎300. Gd ⫽ mass flux through any perforation 共kg/m2s兲
H ⫽ Plate height in any channel 共m兲
h ⫽ heat transfer coefficient 共W/共m2K兲兲
K ⫽ intermediate constant
k ⫽ effective thermal conductivity 共W/共mK兲兲
l ⫽ plate thickness 共m兲
ṁ ⫽ mass flow rate 共kg/s兲
Nu ⫽ Nusselt number
n ⫽ number of plate-spacer pairs
ntu f ⫽ number of convective heat transfer units per stream
(⫽hA/ṁc p )
ntup ⫽ dimensionless plate conductance 共Eq. 共6兲兲
ntup,o ⫽ overall dimensionless plate conductance 共Eq. 共6兲兲
p ⫽ plate porosity
Ri ⫽ inner radius of the circular shape matrix heat ex-
changer 共m兲
Ro ⫽ outer radius of the circular shape matrix heat ex-
changer 共m兲
Re ⫽ Reynolds number
s ⫽ spacer thickness 共m兲
Fig. 9 Effect of channel used for the low-pressure stream on V ⫽ volume of the heat exchanger 共m3兲
the channel radii. „C1: low-pressure stream in the inside chan- W ⫽ plate width 共m兲
nel and C2: low-pressure stream in the annular channel.… Z ⫽ constant
Greek Letters f ⫽ fluid
␣ ⫽ intermediate parameter ( ␣ ⫽exp(⫺ntu f )) i ⫽ 1,2 channel numbers
␤ ⫽ intermediate parameter ( ␤ ⫽1/(1⫺ ␥ )) p ⫽ plate
⌫ ⫽ intermediate factor 共Eq. 共32兲兲 o ⫽ overall
␥ ⫽ exponent in Nusselt number correlation 共Eq. 共14兲兲 s ⫽ spacer
⌬P ⫽ pressure drop in the low-pressure channel 共Pa兲 w ⫽ separating wall
⑀ ⫽ heat exchanger effectiveness
␩ fin ⫽ fin efficiency 共Eq. 共33兲兲 References
␬ ⫽ intermediate parameter 共Eq. 共5兲兲关1兴 McMahan, H. O., Bowen, R. J., and Bleyle, G. A., 1950, ‘‘A Perforated Plate
␭ ⫽ overall axial conduction parameter Heat Exchanger,’’ Trans. ASME, 72, pp. 623–632.
关2兴 Venkatarathnam, G., and Sarangi, S., 1990, ‘‘Matrix Heat Exchangers and
(⫽k s A w /sn(ṁc p ) 1 ) Their Application in Cryogenic Systems,’’ Cryogenics, 30, pp. 907–918.
␭p ⫽ dimensionless lateral conductance of the separating 关3兴 Fleming, R. B., 1969, ‘‘A Compact Perforated Plate Heat Exchanger,’’ Adv.
wall 共see Table 2兲 Cryog. Eng., 14, pp. 197–204.
␮ ⫽ viscosity of the fluid 共Pa.s兲关4兴 Sarangi, S., and Barclay, J. A., 1984, ‘‘An Analysis of Compact Heat Ex-
changer Performance,’’ Cryogenic Processes and Equipment—1984, P. J. Ker-
␯ ⫽ heat capacity rate ratio 关 (ṁc p ) 1 /(ṁc p ) 2 兴 ney et al., eds., ASME, New York, pp. 37–44.
␰ ⫽ drag coefficient 共Eq. 共12兲兲关5兴 Venkatarathnam, G., 1996, ‘‘Effectiveness N tu relationship in perforated plate
␳ ⫽ density of the fluid 共kg/m3兲 matrix Heat Exchangers,’’ Cryogenics, 36, pp. 235–241.
␸ ⫽ intermediate parameter 共Eq. 共5兲兲关6兴 Venkatarathnam, G., 1998, ‘‘A Straight Forward Method for the Sizing of
␺ ⫽ intermediate parameter 共Eq. 共17兲兲 Perforated Matrix Heat Exchangers,’’ Proc. of Cryogenic Eng. Conf., July
28–Aug. 2, Portland, OR, pp. 1643–1650.
⍀ ⫽ intermediate parameter 共Eq. 共22兲兲关7兴 Mikulin, E. I., Shevich, Yu. A., Potapov, V. N., Solntsev, M. Ya., and Yusova,
␻ ⫽ intermediate parameter 共Eq. 共17兲兲 G. M., 1980, ‘‘Study of Matrix Type Heat Exchangers Made of Perforated
Plates,’’ Trans. Chem. Pet. Eng., pp. 514–519.
Subscripts 关8兴 Shevyakova, S. A., and Orlov, V. K., 1983, ‘‘Study of Hydraulic Resistance
and Heat Transfer in Perforated Plate Heat Exchangers,’’ Trans. J. Eng. Phys.,
1 ⫽ cold fluid pp. 734–737.
2 ⫽ hot fluid 关9兴 Venkatarathnam, G., and Sarangi, S., 1991, ‘‘Analysis of Matrix Heat Ex-
eff ⫽ effective changer Performance,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 113, pp. 830–837.
Influence of Crossflow-Induced
Swirl and Impingement on Heat
Transfer in an Internal Coolant
S. V. Ekkad1
Assistant Professor, Passage of a Turbine Airfoil
Assoc. Mem. ASME
e-mail: ekkad@me.lsu.edu Detailed heat transfer distributions are presented inside a two-pass coolant channel with
crossflow-induced swirl and impingement. The impingement and passage crossflow are
G. Pamula generated from one coolant passage to the adjoining coolant passage through a series of
Graduate Student, straight or angled holes along the dividing wall. The holes provide for the flow turning
Mem. ASME from one passage to another typically achieved in a conventional design by a 180-deg
U-bend. The holes direct the flow laterally from one passage to another and generate
S. Acharya different secondary flow patterns in the second pass. These secondary flows produce
L. R. Daniel Professor, impingement and swirl and lead to higher heat transfer enhancement. Three different
Fellow ASME lateral hole configurations are tested for three Reynolds numbers (Re⫽10,000, 25,000,
50,000). The configurations were varied by angle of delivery and location on the divider
Mechanical Engineering Department, wall. A transient liquid crystal technique is used to measure the detailed heat transfer
Louisiana State University, coefficient distributions inside the passages. Results with the new crossflow feed system
Baton Rouge, LA 70803 are compared with the results from the traditional 180-deg turn passage. Results show
that the crossflow feed configurations produce significantly higher Nusselt numbers on the
second pass walls without affecting the first pass heat transfer levels. The heat transfer
enhancement is as high as seven to eight times greater than obtained in the second pass
for a channel with a 180-deg turn. The increased measured pressure drop (rise in friction
factor) caused by flow through the crossflow holes are compensated by the significant
heat transfer enhancement obtained by the new configuration. 关S0022-1481共00兲03103-0兴
Keywords: Forced Convection, Heat Transfer, Impingement, Swirling, Turbines
Introduction channels of rectangular cross section, and they provided regional

averaged heat transfer on the top, bottom, and outer walls around
Heat transfer augmentation inside airfoil internal channels is an
the turn. Abuaf et al. 关3兴 provided pressure drop and heat transfer
important issue for the gas turbine industry. As turbine inlet tem-
measurements inside serpentine channels. Fan and Metzger 关4兴
peratures are increased, there is a greater need for more efficient
studied heat transfer in two-pass smooth channels connected by a
cooling. Several strategies are being examined by various inves-
180-deg turn. They compared the effect of channel aspect ratio on
tigators where combinations of turbulated serpentine passage
the heat transfer inside the channels. Chyu 关5兴 provided detailed
cooling, impingement cooling, double-wall cooling, and film cool-
mass 共heat兲 transfer distributions inside two-pass and three-pass
ing are considered. The focus of this study is to investigate an
smooth channels connected by a series of 180-deg turns. Ekkad
alternative internal cooling strategy where additional secondary
and Han 关6兴 focused on the 180-deg turn region and presented
flows and heat transfer enhancement are generated without radical
detailed heat transfer distributions around the turn region. They
alteration to the existing internal designs of cooling passages. This
indicated the strong three dimensionality of the flows due to the
strategy consists of replacing the conventional U-bend between
centrifugal forces and their effects on heat transfer. Flow through
the two passages 共Fig. 1共a兲兲 with a series of cylindrical holes
the 180-deg turn causes enhancement and nonuniform heat trans-
along the dividing wall connecting the two passages 共Fig. 1共b兲兲.
fer distributions in the second pass immediately downstream of
The cylindrical holes permit lateral injection from the first passage
the turn. A more recent study by Hibbs et al. 关7兴 indicates that
to the second passage; this leads to a combination of impingement
bend-induced secondary flows and heat transfer nonuniformities
and crossflow-induced swirl in the second passage. This combina-
are also present under conditions of rotation.
tion of impingement and swirl is expected to provide a higher and
Several other researchers 共关8–11兴兲 have all focused on enhanc-
more uniform heat transfer in the second passage. If significant
ing heat transfer in both the first pass and second pass using rib
enhancement in the second passage is obtained, this strategy may
turbulators. The maximum enhancement reported in the second
also be useful for leading edge cooling 共with coolant injected in
pass of a serpentine channel with a combination of the turn and
the lateral rather than longitudinal direction兲 where the heat trans-
discrete rib turbulators is around six to seven times higher than the
fer loads are most significant.
fully developed flow Nusselt number 共Dittus-Boelter Equation兲.
There have been several studies on two-pass channels reported
Recently, it has been observed that swirl induction in the flow
in the literature. Boyle 关1兴 provided centerline heat transfer coef-
aids in heat transfer enhancement. This has been investigated by
ficient information inside serpentine passages. Metzger and Sahm
Glezer et al. 关12兴, Ligrani et al. 关13兴, and Moon et al. 关14兴. They
关2兴 presented Nusselt numbers near sharp 180-deg turns in smooth
create swirl by injecting air into the tube through tangential jets
1
along the wall. Hedlund et al. 关15兴 presented measurements inside
a tubular swirl chamber for simulating turbine blade internal cool-
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Aug. 4, 1999; ing. Swirl cooling appears to be a promising alternative to using
revision received, Apr. 12, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: J. Han. discrete turbulators for achieving higher heat transfer enhance-
lateral injection holes are drilled through the divider wall between
the two channels and the turn is eliminated. The holes are angled
at ␤⫽0 deg and 45 deg towards one sidewall to produce different
swirl flow conditions in the second pass. The location of the hole
on the divider wall is also a parameter in the configuration. For
each case, three flow channel Reynolds numbers of 10,000,
25,000, and 50,000 are tested. It is expected that the heat transfer
distributions on the two sidewalls will be different for all cases
due to strong impingement on one wall. Results are presented for
both sidewalls of the two passes, which represent the pressure side
and suction side surfaces of the airfoil. For comparison, results are
also presented for a two-pass channel connected by a 180-deg
turn.
Experimental Setup
Figure 2 presents a schematic of the experimental setup. The
experimental setup consists of an image processing system 共RGB
Color CCD Camera, Color Frame Grabber Card, PC and Imaging
Fig. 1 Illustration of channels with „a… 180 deg turn „b… holes Software兲, temperature measurement system, flow loop, and the
test section. The RGB camera is focused on the test section and
the color FG card is programmed through the software to analyze
ment. All the above studies are, however, in circular one-pass real-time images for color signals during a transient heat transfer
tubular channels and are not similar to the system proposed in the test.
present study. The flow circuit consists of an air supply from a 300-psi com-
The present study, as indicated earlier, focuses on investigating pressor. The air is regulated and metered through a standard ori-
an alternative approach for heat transfer enhancement without sig- fice meter to measure the flow rate through the test section. The
nificantly altering the internal cooling design existent in the air is then routed through an in-line air heater 共3 KW兲 controlled
present cooled blades. The aim is to deliver the coolant from first by a temperature controller system. The air from the heater is then
passage to second passage through lateral slots along the dividing diverted away from the test section with a three-way ball diverter
wall. Lateral injection leads to a combination of impingement and valve. The heated air temperature is monitored by the temperature
crossflow-induced swirl and is expected to produce significant control unit by measuring the heated air temperature immediately
heat transfer enhancement in the second pass. In this study, the downstream of the heater. When the valve is flipped, the air is
Fig. 2 Experimental test setup
Fig. 3 Three test channel configurations; „a… Case 2, „b… Case 3, „c… Case 4
routed through the test section. A series of honeycomb strips and denoted as Case 1. In Case 2 the divider wall consists of normal
a mesh help produce a uniform flow at the entrance into the test angled holes 共␤⫽0 deg兲 and the lateral jets are expected to im-
section. pinge on the opposite secondary wall 共top wall兲. The holes are
Figure 3共a兲 shows a schematic of the test section. The test placed such that the hole centerline is 1.27 cm from Wall 1. In
channel is a 5.08-cm square cross section through the 60.96-cm Case 3, the holes are angled at ␤⫽45 deg. The holes are posi-
length. The channel length to hydraulic diameter ratio (L/D) is tioned such that the flow is directed towards Wall 1, and the exit
12. There is no 180-deg turn for the channels connected by the location of the hole centerlines entering the second pass are 1.27
holes. All of the flow passes through the holes. There are no holes cm from Wall 1. In Case 4, the holes are also angled at ␤⫽45 deg,
along the divider wall for the first 30.48 cm of the channel length but with the exit hole centerlines located 3.81 cm from Wall 1.
from entrance (L/D⫽6). The 12 holes are then evenly distributed This case is different than Case 3, in that, the lateral angle is
over the next 30.48 cm of the channel length. There are 12 holes directed away from the nearest wall to the hole location.
of 1.27-cm diameter each. The holes are spaced two-hole diam-
The heat transfer measurements are made only on Wall 1 and
eters 共centerline to centerline兲 apart from each other. The lateral
Wall 2 of the Plexiglas test section. The surfaces are coated on the
hole locations on the divider wall were designed to produce dif-
ferent swirling flow conditions in the channel. The ratio of the inside with a thin layer of liquid crystals 共Hallcrest: R35C1W兲. A
total area of all the holes to the turn region area in the 180-deg thin black paint coating is sprayed behind the liquid crystal coat-
turn case was 0.6. The thickness of all the walls in the test section ing to ensure visibility of the liquid crystal color changes when
was 1.27 cm. The primary walls are designated Wall 1 and Wall viewed from the outside. Once the test section is coated with both
2. These walls are the channel walls that are exposed to the pres- the liquid crystal and black paint layers, the insides of the channel
sure and suction surfaces of the airfoil. The top and bottom walls are opaque. Thermocouples are placed at inlet and outlets of each
are only exposed to only the coolant flow 共in the actual turbine passage 共a total of four兲 to measure the local bulk temperature of
blade兲. These are considered secondary walls for convection cool- the heated air as a function of time. The transient thermocouple
ing in actual turbine blades. The endwall is the wall that is ex- outputs are digitized during the test using an eight-channel A/D
posed to the blade tip 共blades兲 or the plenum region for the vane. system. Since the air temperature from a sudden switching of the
Figure 3共b兲 shows the three hole configurations viewed from valve does not produce a step change, it is important to measure
the side of the test section. The two-pass with the 180-deg turn is the transient response of the air temperature.
Procedure and Data Reduction
The air mass flow rate is set for the required channel Reynolds
number condition, and then heated through the in-line air heater.
The temperature at the exit of the heater is set based on some
qualification tests to produce acceptable liquid crystal color
change times during the transient test. The heated air is initially
routed away from the test section. The temperature measurement
system and the image processing system are set to trigger for
initiating data measurement at the same instant. When the air is
heated to the steady required temperature, the diverter valve is
flipped to let the hot air into the test section. The thermochromic
liquid crystal coating is heated by the hot air and changes color
when it reaches its display color range. Liquid crystal color tem-
peratures are pre-set and are calibrated under lab lighting condi-
tions. The liquid crystal used in this study has a narrow band
共1°C兲 with the initial red color appearing at 35.1°C, then green Fig. 4 Smoke flow visualization results for „a… Case 2, „b… Case
color appearance at 35.4°C, and finally blue color at 35.9°C. The 3, „c… Case 4
image processing system maps the test section into 500⫻200
pixel locations and monitors each location individually for color
changes. The reference point in this study is set as the appearance
of green color during the transient. Thresholding was used to de-
termine the actual color appearance during the transient test. Thus
from the measured thermocouple locations. The time-step changes
the image processing system will provide time of color changes at
every pixel when it reaches 35.4°C. The test duration is typically are then included into the equation to obtain a function of the form
a maximum of 150 seconds. The air temperature is set such that given below. Since the air temperature is not a step-change func-
the times of color changes for all pixels are between 10–150 tion but time-dependent, Metzger and Larson 关16兴 proposed to use
seconds. During the time period, the test section does not violate the Duhamel’s superposition integral to include the time-
the semi-infinite solid assumption. dependent heated air response into the above equation. Assuming
The test section is made of Plexiglas© so that a semi-infinite negligible axial conduction, the surface temperature response
solid assumption can be applied on the test section wall. The local (T w ) of the exposed semi-infinite wall with a convective boundary
air bulk temperature for each axial pixel location is interpolated condition can be written as 共关10兴兲
Fig. 5 Detailed heat transfer distributions for all channels at ReÄ25,000
兺再冋册冋 h 冑␣ 共 t⫺ ␶ j 兲
册冎 The individual uncertainties in the measurement are listed below
N
h 2 ␣ 共 t⫺ ␶ j 兲
T w ⫺T i ⫽ 1⫺exp erfc as: time of color change, t-⫾3 percent; thermal properties of wall
j⫽1 k2 k ( ␣ ,k)-⫾5 percent; mainstream temperature, T m -⫾3 percent;
color change temperature, T w -⫾2 percent; initial temperature,
⫻关 ⌬T m, 共 j, j⫺1 兲兴 (1) T i -⫾3 percent. The maximum uncertainty is incurred at the areas
where ⌬T m, ( j, j⫺1 ) and ␶ j are the temperature and time-step of shortest or longest color changes. The shortest color changes 共if
changes interpolated from the digitized temperature outputs. T m , time of color change is lower than five seconds兲 produce uncer-
and T i are the heated air and test section initial temperatures, tainty levels as high as ⫾14.5 percent. The uncertainty in friction
respectively. Plexiglass properties, thermal diffusivity 共␣兲 and factor measurement is on the order of ⫾8.0 percent based on the
thermal conductivity 共k兲, are known. The time, t, of color change uncertainty in pressure differential measurement and mass flow
to green is measured by the image processing system. This equa- measurements.
tion is applicable at each pixel location on the test surface. The
equation is solved at every pixel location to obtain the local heat
transfer coefficient, h. Ekkad and Han 关6,10兴 used a similar Results and Discussion
approach. Flow Visualization. Flow visualization was performed using
The overall friction factor for any configuration is determined smoke flow injection. The image processing system was triggered
by measuring the pressure drop across the test section (⌬ P). The to capture continuous frames from the initiation of the smoke
friction factor is defined as f̄ ⫽2⌬ P(D/L)/( ␳ V̄ 2 ). The overall flow. The sequential grabbing of frames was curtailed when the
measured friction factor is normalized with a calculated friction test section was completely filled with smoke. The saved images
factor for the same length of a straight smooth channel given by were then animated to determine the flow behavior inside the
f 0 ⫽0.046 Re⫺0.2. channels. The smoke flow visualization was performed at a low
The average experimental uncertainty based on the methodol- flow rate condition 共low Reynolds number兲. Although the flow
ogy of Kline and McKlintock 关17兴 is on the order of ⫾7.4 percent. conditions in the actual heat transfer tests are different, these vi-
Fig. 6 Spanwise averaged Nusselt number distributions on both walls

compared to a two-pass with turn for ReÄ25,000
Fig. 7 Effect of flow Reynolds number for each case on Wall 1
sualization experiments were used to provide better understanding Case 3. The jet exits are farther from Wall 1 in this case which
of the complex heat transfer distributions inside the channel. The causes the higher impingement location. After impingement on
visualizations were performed only for the channels with lateral Wall 1, the flow behavior appears to be similar to that for Case 3.
holes. The 180-deg turn channel has been widely investigated The strong vortical structure from the smoke flow visualizations
previously so it is not presented. provide qualitative proof on the presence of the swirl induced due
Figure 4 shows the smoke flow patterns in the second pass. The to impingement on the walls of the channel for Cases 3 and 4. It
camera was placed to view the inside of the channel from the is, however, not very clear for Case 2.
endwall side so the captured images truly reflect the flow patterns
at the farthest location of the channel from the inlet/exit location. Heat Transfer Measurements. Detailed heat transfer distri-
For each case with holes, only one of the sequential frames are butions are presented for all four cases at three channel Reynolds
presented. For Case 2, the flow appears to exit the hole into the numbers of 10,000, 25,000, and 50,000. In presenting these re-
second pass as a jet. The jet seems to impinge on the top wall and sults, the primary goal is to compare the heat transfer performance
ricochets back towards the divider wall. The jet breaks up into two for Cases 2, 3, and 4 with that of the baseline Case 1.
structures. The first structure almost immediately re-impinges on The detailed Nusselt number contours are presented for Re
Wall 1 and is pushed downward by the crossflow. A small recir- ⫽25,000 in Fig. 5. The top figure shows the distributions for Case
culation region is formed at the right-hand bottom corner of the 1 共180-deg turn兲. The results for both Wall 1 and Wall 2 are the
second pass. For Case 3, the jets strongly impinge on Wall 1. The same so data for only one wall is presented for Case 1. However,
distance from the exit of the hole to the wall is very short thus results for both walls are presented for the other three cases. The
producing a strong impingement. The jet is deflected towards the sidewall on which impingement occurs first is called Wall 1 and
top wall where it is redeflected toward Wall 2. The flow appears the opposite facing wall is called Wall 2. The lower passage in
to roll into a vortex with the core flow being the slowest. The Fig. 5 is the inlet passage 共first pass兲 and the upper passage is the
slower flow is then pushed downstream by the crossflow. For exit passage 共second pass兲. Based on the surface heat transfer
Case 4, the jets appear to impinge strongly on Wall 1. The im- distributions and the pressure measurements, a conceptual sche-
pingement location along the wall is at higher location than for matic of the flow pattern is shown for each case.
Fig. 8 Effect of flow Reynolds number for each case on Wall 2
The first pass or inlet passage is minimally affected by the channels connected by 180-deg turns. The present results are con-
changes in configuration 共Cases 1–4兲 as seen from the color consistent with the results for smooth channels presented by Ekkad
tours. This observation is encouraging since enhancements in the and Han 关6,10兴.
second pass are not associated with heat transfer reductions in the For Case 2, the air enters axially in one direction into the first
first pass. The second pass, expectedly, has different Nusselt num- pass and is routed into the second pass through the series of
ber distributions depending upon the configuration. For Case 1, straight laterally directed holes. The heat transfer coefficient is
where the air turns into the second pass through a 180-deg turn, strongly enhanced on Wall 1, which is closer to the hole row. The
flow separation and reattachment are clearly observed past the laterally injected flow undergoes a sudden expansion through the
bend. The first-pass airflow impinges directly on the endwall and hole and impinges along Wall 1 causing localized high heat trans-
turns 180 deg towards the second pass. The flow is then pulled fer regions for each jet location. The lower heat transfer below the
away from the divider wall due to the centrifugal forces generated impingement region is due to recirculation of slower separated
by the turn and thus heat transfer is enhanced near the outer wall flow. The flow after impingement on Wall 1 is redirected by the
as the flow impinges on to it. The secondary flow is then pushed top wall towards Wall 2. The other side of the jet expansion
back into the middle of the duct and mixes with the main flow 共towards the channel center兲 directly impinges on the top wall and
structures and enhances heat transfer over the entire span imme- is also deflected towards Wall 2. The jet impingement location on
diately after the turn. Further downstream of the turn, the flow Wall 1 is at a higher location from the divider wall for the jets
appears to become more spanwise uniform and tends to approach near the endwall. The impingement location is shifted downward
fully developed flow conditions. The heat transfer is unevenly towards the exit, due to the increasing strength of the passage flow
enhanced only for a distance of two hydraulic diameters down- as it moves towards the exit. The passage flow near the endwall is
stream of the turn. Due to this reason, there is a necessity to minimal and increases as the number of jets increases from the
provide turbulators to enhance the heat transfer in serpentine endwall to the exit of the second pass.
Fig. 9 Effect of flow configuration „case… on Wall 1 for each Reynolds number
For Case 3, the air is routed from the first pass into the second tion (X/D) on both walls for each crossflow injection case with
pass through a series of angled holes directed at Wall 1. The direct the baseline 180-deg turn case at Re⫽25,000. Due to high reso-
impingement causes extremely high Nusselt numbers on Wall 1. lution of the measurement technique, only some of the data points
Also, the effect of passage crossflow is reduced as the impinge- are marked with symbols to avoid confusion. There are around
ment is strong and jets travel a very short distance before im- 1000 data points in each curve. The Nusselt number for fully
pingement. For all 12 jets, the location of impingement on the developed flow (Nu0 ) in a channel 共Dittus-Boelter Equation兲 was
wall is at nearly the same spanwise location relative to the jet. The used for normalizing the experimental results. All the four cases
strong impingement on Wall 1 also produces a fairly high Nusselt show small variation in the first pass 共inlet passage兲 (X/D⭐0)
numbers on the upper side of Wall 2. This effect is most notice- Nusselt number distributions. Also, both the walls for each case
able on Wall 2 close to the endwall of the passage where the show similar heat transfer ratio (Nu/Nu0 ) values. In the second
signatures of individual jets can be seen. As the flow moves pass, the primary impingement wall 共Wall 1兲 for Cases 2, 3, and 4
downstream and the crossflow gets stronger, the discrete effects of always shows the highest enhancement with values as high as 10.
the individual jets can no longer be observed. The Nusselt numbers exhibit wavy patterns reflective of jet im-
For Case 4, the jets are located closer to Wall 2, but are ori- pingement. However, the wavy oscillations are small 共about 30
ented in the same direction as in Case 3, and impinge on Wall 1. percent兲 relative to the baseline. All three injection Cases 共2, 3, 4兲
The impingement is strongest for the middle jets. The heat trans- show significant enhancement over Case 1 with Case 3 showing
fer enhancement is significant on the impingement wall 共Wall 1兲 the most uniform enhancement levels through the channel length.
with the heat transfer enhanced only on the top half of Wall 2. The On Wall 2, all three cases again show enhancements over Case 1.
schematic flow pattern shown 共Fig. 4兲 identifies the reasons for For Case 3, the Wall 2 data is nearly three times higher than the
the higher enhancement in the top corners of Wall 1 and Wall 2; Case 1 共180-deg bend兲 data. For Cases 2 and 4, the Wall 2 data
a small recirculation zone in the bottom right corner, and slower also shows enhancement although they are more modest.
fluid at the left bottom corner of the channel. Figure 7 compares the effect of Reynolds number on spanwise-
Figure 6 presents the spanwise-averaged results comparing the averaged Nusselt number enhancement for each case on Wall 1.
heat transfer enhancement (N̄u/Nu0 ) versus the streamwise loca- This is the impingement wall for Cases 2, 3, and 4. For Case 1, the
Fig. 10 Effect of flow configuration „case… on Wall 2 for each Reynolds
number
Nusselt number ratio is similar at all Reynolds numbers through- exceed 20. Further increase in Reynolds number produces lower
out the duct. The highest enhancement after the turn region ob- Nusselt number ratios around 8–9 due to increased crossflow ef-
tained for this configuration is about three times the fully devel- fects. The crossflow velocity versus local jet velocity is the pri-
oped value for channel flow. For Case 2, Nusselt number mary reason for the Reynolds number effect for this case. At
enhancement is at similar levels in the first pass at all Reynolds lower Reynolds number, the generated crossflow velocity in the
numbers. In the second pass, the Nusselt number ratios indicate second pass due to accumulation of coolant is much smaller than
impingement like distributions with peaks and valleys for Re the local jet velocity through each hole. For Case 4, the Reynolds
⫽10,000 and 25,000 with slightly lower values at higher Rey- number effect is negligible. The Nusselt number ratios are similar
nolds number of 25,000. However, at Re⫽50,000, the Nusselt through the duct for all Reynolds numbers.
number distribution is different than for the other two Reynolds Figure 8 compares the effect of Reynolds number on spanwise-
numbers and the wavy impingement induced behavior is no averaged Nusselt number enhancement for each case on Wall 2.
longer seen. It appears that at such high Reynolds numbers, the Reynolds number effect is very small for Cases 1, 2, and 4. It
configuration produces significant streamwise crossflow effects appears that the channel flow effect is predominant for all these
reducing the effect of local impingement. However, the Nusselt cases and hence the Nusselt number can be normalized with the
number ratios are comparable to that at lower Reynolds numbers fully developed flow Nusselt number for that particular Reynolds
and still considerably higher than the baseline case. This indicates number and the data collapses on to a single curve. However, for
that the crossflow jets impart a strong degree of swirl to the cross- Case 3, this is not evident. The Nusselt number enhancement ratio
flow, and lead to enhancements in heat transfer. Nusselt number decreases with increasing Reynolds number. This may be due to
ratios are highest closer to the exit than at individual upstream the increasing crossflow effect for higher Reynolds number cases.
(X/D⬎0) impingement locations. For Case 3, the impingement Also, for this case, the first impingement of the jets on Wall 1 is
effect is the strongest. First-pass results show very small effect of stronger, creating a ricocheting flow toward the opposite wall that
Reynolds number. For the second pass, at a low Reynolds number produces a fairly strong impingement on Wall 2 leading to the
of 10,000, the impingement effect causes Nusselt number ratios to high Nusselt numbers observed.
Fig. 12 Overall averaged Nusselt number ratio versus friction
factor ratio for all four cases
Fig. 11 Comparison of present data to published Nusselt
number ratios for the overall averaged rib turbulated second
pass
using a precision manometer. The Darcy friction factor ( f̄ ) is
computed using the known pressure drop (⌬ P) across the entire
Figure 9 compares the effect of different configurations 共cases兲 two-pass channel and the mass flux ( ␳ V̄⫽G) through the channel.
for each Reynolds number for Wall 1. At Re⫽10,000, all cases The Darcy friction factor is normalized by the Darcy friction fac-
produce similar heat transfer levels in the first pass. In the second tor of a smooth channel given as f 0 ⫽0.046 Re⫺0.2. The friction
pass, Case 3 produces the highest enhancement due to stronger factor ratio ( f / f 0 ) is computed for each channel at a particular
impingement on Wall 1. Case 1 produces lowest heat transfer Reynolds number. The overall averaged Nusselt number ratio
enhancement. Case 2 shows lower heat transfer enhancement in (Nu/Nu0 ) is obtained by averaging the detailed Nusselt number
the region near X/D⫽1 and increases towards the exit. Case 4 distributions of both walls for both passes so as to obtain a single
produces the opposite effect with higher heat transfer around Nusselt number enhancement value for the entire channel irre-
X/D⫽1 and decreasing toward the exit. At Re⫽25,000, Cases 2, spective of the channel configuration. The Nu/Nu0 value is plotted
3, and 4 produce similar levels of enhancement in the impinge- against the corresponding f / f 0 for the channel in Fig. 12. At low
ment region 共See Fig. 6兲. Case 1 produces significantly lower heat Reynolds numbers of around 10,000, Case 3 provides significantly
transfer enhancement than the other three cases. At Re⫽50,000, higher heat transfer enhancement than all other channels but also
Case 4 produces the highest heat transfer enhancement close to provides higher friction factor ratio. At Re⫽25,000 and 50,000, it
the endwall and decreases with increasing streamwise crossflow appears that all three cases with crossflow injection appear to
distance. Case 3 produces opposite effect with lower heat transfer produce similar heat transfer enhancement levels. However,
near the endwall and higher heat transfer toward the exit. This among the three cases, Case 2 produces the lowest friction factor
may be attributed to longer impingement distance from hole exit ratio. The heat transfer enhancement is around 4.0 times the fully
and stronger crossflows pushing the jets away from the walls. developed Nusselt number and friction factor is around 10–12
Case 2 does not show impingement like enhancement distribu- times higher than the smooth channel friction factor.
tions as seen for the other cases. This implies that the laterally The thermal performance of the channel is computed using the
directed jets do not impinge on Wall 1 at this high Reynolds formulation suggested by Gee and Webb 关18兴 for ribbed channels.
number, and instead contribute to increasing the swirl and thus the The thermal performance parameter is given as (Nu/Nu0 )/
heat transfer.
Figure 10 compares the effect of different configurations ( f̄ / f 0 ) 1/3. The thermal performance parameter for each case is
共cases兲 for each Reynolds number for Wall 2. All four cases pro- plotted against Reynolds number in Fig. 13. Case 3 provides the
duce similar heat transfer enhancement levels in the first pass. highest thermal performance parameter value at a Reynolds num-
Case 3 produces the highest enhancement at all three Reynolds ber of 10,000. At higher Reynolds numbers, Cases 2, 3, and 4
numbers in the second pass. Cases 2 and 4 produce similar levels produce similar thermal performance values. Based on Figs. 11–
and Case 1 produces the lowest enhancement as expected. 13, it can be concluded that channels connected by orifices instead
Figure 11 compares the overall averaged Nusselt number ratios of a 180-deg turn provide higher heat transfer enhancement. How-
ever, the pressure drop penalty is also higher for such channels
(Nu/Nu0 ) for the second pass for Cases 1–4 to averaged Nusselt
number ratios for rib turbulated second pass of a two-pass channel
with 180-deg turn from Chandra et al. 关9兴, and Ekkad and Han
关10兴. Both Chandra et al. 关9兴 and Ekkad and Han 关10兴 did not
provide any results for pressure drop to compare overall perfor-
mance results. Ekkad and Han 关10兴 has only one sidewall ribbed
whereas Chandra et al. 关9兴 has both sidewalls ribbed in their
study. It is clear that all the three geometries introduced in this
present study outperform the 90-deg and 60-deg rib effect in the
second pass. These comparisons clearly show the effectiveness of
these new cooling geometry channels compared to conventional
designs.
Overall Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer Distributions.
Overall pressure drops through each of the channels are measured
at all three Reynolds numbers using static pressure taps that were
placed along the top and bottom secondary walls to measure the
overall pressure differential across the entire row of holes or the Fig. 13 Overall thermal performance parameter compared to
turn. The pressure differential was measured in inches of water Reynolds number for each case
compared to a smooth channel with 180-deg turn. Since there is ␮ ⫽ dynamic viscosity of air
no data available on thermal performance parameter for two-pass ␳ ⫽ density
channels in published literature, comparisons are not provided. ␶ ⫽ time step used in integration
Subscripts
Conclusions
0 ⫽ correlation based
This paper presents detailed heat transfer measurements inside
i ⫽ initial condition
two-pass channels connected by a series of holes on the divider
j ⫽ time step based
wall. Three lateral hole-injection configurations are tested and
m ⫽ bulk flow or mainstream
compared to the common 180-deg U-turn channel. For each case,
w ⫽ wall
results are presented for three channel Reynolds numbers of
10,000, 25,000, and 50,000. Detailed heat transfer distributions References
show that the heat transfer in the second pass is significantly en- 关1兴 Boyle, R. J., 1984, ‘‘Heat Transfer in Serpentine Passages with Turbulence
hanced due to a combination of impingement and swirl induced Promoters,’’ ASME Paper No. 84-HT-24.
by the lateral injection. Heat transfer enhancements higher than 10 关2兴 Metzger, D. E., and Sahm, M. K., 1986, ‘‘Heat Transfer Around Sharp 180°
are obtained on the impingement wall and around 4–6 on the Turns in Smooth Rectangular Channels,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 108, pp.
500–506.
opposite wall. The heat transfer distributions on the first pass wall 关3兴 Abuaf, N., Gibbs, R., and Baum, R., 1986, ‘‘Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer
are not affected significantly due to the change from a 180-deg Coefficient Distributions in Serpentine Passages With and Without Turbulence
turn to a series of holes. This method of coolant supply from one Promoters,’’ Proceedings 8th International Heat Transfer Conference, ASME,
channel to another inside the blade therefore appears more prom- New York, pp. 2837–2845.
关4兴 Fan, C. S., and Metzger, D. E., 1987, ‘‘Effect of Channel Aspect Ratio on Heat
ising than the conventional U-bend serpentine channel design. Im- Transfer in Rectangular Passage Sharp 180-deg Turns,’’ ASME Paper 87-GT-
portantly, the need for rib turbulators on the second pass may be 113.
eliminated due to the significantly higher heat transfer enhance- 关5兴 Chyu, M. K., 1991, ‘‘Regional Heat Transfer in Two-Pass and Three-Pass
ment obtained using the lateral hole-injection configuration. There Passages with 180-deg Sharp Turns,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 113, pp. 63–
70.
is a pressure drop penalty associated with the new geometry that 关6兴 Ekkad, S. V., and Han, J. C., 1995, ‘‘Local Heat Transfer Distributions Near a
is about 200–300 percent higher than that for a two-pass channel Sharp 180 deg Turn of a Two-Pass Square Channel Using a Transient Liquid
with a 180-deg turn. However, rib turbulators on channel walls Crystal Image Technique,’’ J. Flow Visual. Image Process., 2, No. 3, pp.
also provide additional pressure drop 共100–150 percent higher兲 as 287–298.
关7兴 Hibbs, R., Acharya, S., Chen, Y., and Nikitopoulos, D., 1996, ‘‘Heat/Mass
compared to the smooth channel with a 180-deg turn. Transfer in a Two-Pass Rotating Smooth and Ribbed Channel,’’ ASME Na-
tional Heat Transfer Conference, Houston, Aug.
Nomenclature 关8兴 Han, J. C., Chandra, P. R., and Lau, S. C., 1988, ‘‘Local Heat/Mass Transfer
Distributions Around Sharp 180 deg Turns in Two-Pass Smooth and Rib-
b ⫽ divider wall thickness Roughened Channels,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 110, pp. 91–98.
d ⫽ hole diameter 关9兴 Chandra, P. R., Han, J. C., and Lau, S. C., 1988, ‘‘Effect of Rib Angle on
D ⫽ square channel width or height, also hydraulic diameter Local Heat/Mass Transfer Distribution in a Two-Pass Rib-Roughened Chan-
nel,’’ ASME J. Turbomach., 110, pp. 70–79.
f ⫽ Darcy friction factor, 2⌬ P(D h /(2L))/( ␳ V̄ 2 ) 关10兴 Ekkad, S. V., and Han, J. C., 1997, ‘‘Detailed Heat Transfer Distributions in
f0 ⫽ Darcy friction factor in all-smooth wall channel, 0.046 Two-Pass Square Channels With Rib Turbulators,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf.,
Re⫺0.2 40, No. 11, pp. 2525–2537.
关11兴 Hibbs, R., Acharya, S., Chen, Y., Nikitopoulos, D., and Myrum, T., 1998,
h ⫽ convective heat transfer coefficient ‘‘Heat Transfer in a Two-Pass Internally Ribbed Turbine Blade Coolant Chan-
k ⫽ thermal conductivity of test surface material nel With Cylindrical Vortex Generators,’’ ASME J. Turbomach., 120, No. 4,
ka ⫽ thermal conductivity of air pp. 724–734.
L ⫽ length of each pass 关12兴 Glezer, B., Moon, H. K., and O’Connell, T., 1996, ‘‘A Novel Technique for
the Internal Blade Cooling,’’ ASME Paper 96-GT-181.
ṁ ⫽ mass flow rate 关13兴 Ligrani, P. M., Hedlund, C. R., Thambu, R., Babinchak, B. T., Moon, H. K.,
Nu ⫽ Nusselt number, hD/k a and Glezer, B., 1997, ‘‘Flow Phenomena in Swirl Chambers,’’ ASME Paper
Nu0 ⫽ fully developed flow Nusselt number, 0.023 Re0.8Pr0.4 97-GT-530.
关14兴 Moon, H. K., O’Connell, T., and Glezer, B., 1998, ‘‘Heat Transfer Enhance-
p ⫽ hole pitch ment in a Circular Channel Using Lengthwise Continuous Tangential Injec-
P ⫽ pressure tion,’’ International Heat Transfer Conference, Seoul, South Korea.
Pr ⫽ Prandtl number 关15兴 Hedlund, C. R., Ligrani, P. M., Moon, H. K., and Glezer, B., 1998, ‘‘Heat
Re ⫽ channel Reynolds number, ␳ v̄ D/ ␮ Transfer and Flow Phenomena in a Swirl Chamber Simulating Turbine Blade
Internal Cooling,’’ ASME Paper 98-GT-466.
t ⫽ time of color change 关16兴 Metzger, D. E., and Larson, D. E., 1986, ‘‘Use of Melting Point Surface
T ⫽ temperature Coatings for Local Convection Heat Transfer Measurements in Rectangular
v̄ ⫽ average flow velocity Channel Flows With 90-deg Turns,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 108, pp. 48–54.
X ⫽ axial distance from middle of turn 关17兴 Kline, S. J., and McClintock, F. A., 1953, ‘‘Describing Uncertainties in Single
Sample Experiments,’’ Mech. Eng. 共Am. Soc. Mech. Eng.兲, 75, No. 1, pp.
Greek Symbols 3–8.
关18兴 Gee, D. L., and Webb, R. L., 1980, ‘‘Forced Convection Heat Transfer in
␣ ⫽ thermal diffusivity of test surface material Helically Rib-Roughened Tubes,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 23, pp. 1127–
␤ ⫽ angle of inclination of the divider wall holes 1136.
Journal of
Heat Transfer Technical Notes
This section contains shorter technical papers. These shorter papers will be subjected to the same review process as that for full papers.
Transient Double Diffusive Convection ditions are imposed at the vertical boundaries of a rectangular cell
containing a binary fluid. The present paper refers to the experi-
in a Vertical Enclosure With mental studies reported in the bibliography on melting of ice in an
aqueous solution. This has been experimented by Huppert and
Asymmetrical Boundary Conditions Turner 关3兴 or Bénard et al. 关4兴 among others, but there have been
very few attempts to propose a complete numerical simulation
S. Mergui1 共关5,6兴兲.
It has been shown elsewhere 共see 关4兴兲 that a purely convective
e-mail: mergui@fast.u-psud.fr model could retain the main double diffusive mechanisms and
simulate the dominating transport phenomena present in the prob-
D. Gobin lem: A binary fluid at an initial concentration C 0 is initially at rest
in a rectangular cavity at a uniform temperature T 0 ; at time t *
FAST–UMR CNRS 7608 共Universities Paris VI and Paris ⫽0, the temperature of the left wall is raised to a temperature
XI兲, Campus Universitaire, Bâtiment 502, T 1 ⬎T 0 , and a uniform concentration C 1 ⫽0 is specified at the
right wall, while its temperature is maintained at T 0 . Only the
91405 Orsay Cedex, France process of cell formation has already been studied and the purpose
of the present paper is to analyze the time evolution of heat and
species transfer in relation with the flow structure.
This study deals with the numerical analysis of transient heat and
species transfer by natural convection in a binary fluid vertical
layer. The cavity is differentially heated and a solutal buoyancy
force is created by imposing a concentration step at one vertical 2 Governing Equations
wall: This refers to the experimental situation where the compo- The coupled thermal and solutal convective flow created in the
sition gradient inducing the solutal buoyancy force is created by enclosure is essentially a transient process and the time-dependent
melting of pure ice in a salty solution. The constitution of the flow equations have to be considered. The dimensionless temperature ␪
structure and the time evolution of the heat and mass transfer and concentration ␾ are defined using T 0 and C 0 , the initial tem-
characteristics are studied for opposing body forces over a range perature and concentration of the solution, as the reference values.
of thermal and solutal Rayleigh numbers. The numerical results The dimensionless length and time are defined using H and H 2 / ␯
allow to provide a better insight into the mechanisms driving the as the reference quantities.
heat and species transfer at high Lewis number thermohaline
convection. 关S0022-1481共00兲00303-0兴 Equations. The flow is assumed to be laminar, incompress-
ible, and the fluid satisfies the Boussinesq approximation. In terms
of the variables defined above, the governing dimensionless equa-
Keywords: Computational Double Diffusion, Heat Transfer, tions in the binary liquid are the following:
Modeling, Natural Convection
ⵜ•V⫽0, (1)
⳵␪ 1
1 Introduction ⫹V•ⵜ ␪ ⫽ ⌬ ␪ , (2)
⳵t Pr
Thermosolutal convective flows in multicomponent fluids are
met in a large range of natural phenomena or industrial processes. ⳵␾ 1
⫹V•ⵜ ␾ ⫽ ⌬␾, (3)
The competition between thermal and solutal buoyancy forces ⳵t LePr
leads to complex flow structures and the understanding of their
interaction with heat and mass transport is relevant in many fields, ⳵V
⫹ 共 V•ⵜ 兲 V⫽ⵜ 2 V⫺ⵜ P⫹ 共 GrT ␪ ⫹GrS ␾ 兲 k. (4)
such as vulcanology, oceanography, materials processing, separa- ⳵t
tion or solidification processes.
The classical dimensionless parameters appearing in the equations
Actual situations are relatively difficult to simulate in labora-
are the thermal and solutal Grashof numbers, built on the height H
tory experiments under controlled conditions, due to the limita-
of the enclosure, GrT ⫽g ␤ T (T 1 ⫺T 0 )H 3 / ␯ 2 and GrS ⫽g ␤ S (C 0
tions in specifying composition boundary conditions. Among the
many possible configurations in double diffusive convection ⫺C 1 )H 3 / ␯ 2 . We will also use the ratio of the buoyancy forces
共关1,2兴兲, we will focus our attention on situations usually desig- (N⫽GrS /GrT ). The fluid properties are combined in the Prandtl
nated as ‘‘lateral heating,’’ where temperature 共or heat flux兲 con- and Lewis numbers.
The initial conditions are zero temperature and concentration.
1 All the walls are assumed to be rigid, impermeable except the cold
wall. The horizontal walls are adiabatic. The boundary conditions
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Aug. 6 1999; are ␪ (x⫽0,z,t)⫽1 at the hot wall, ␪ (1/A,z,t)⫽0 and
revision received, Apr. 11, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: C. Beckermann. ␾ (1/A,z,t)⫽⫺1 at the cold wall.
Numerical Resolution. The set of coupled equations govern-
ing the problem and the associated initial and boundary conditions
is solved using a finite volume technique directly derived from the
SIMPLER method proposed by Patankar 关7兴. Time integration uses
a first-order implicit scheme and the centered scheme is retained
for spatial discretization of the convective terms. An ADI proce-
dure using a vectorized version of the TDMA algorithm solves the
linear systems of discretized equations, and convergence at each
time step is checked using the L 2 norm of the residues of the
continuity equation.
The computational grid used in the foregoing calculations is
usually defined as follows:
1 In the vertical direction a regular grid is used, since multicel-
lular patterns with size changing cells are expected: For the A
⫽3 aspect ratio studied hereafter, 281 regularly spaced nodes are
usually required in order to describe the flow structures.
2 The grid used in the horizontal direction is irregular, since
higher gradients are located close to the walls. The major con-
straint is due to the solutal boundary layer thickness, whose order
of magnitude may be estimated from the usual scaling laws 关8兴
based on the solutal Rayleigh number (RaS ⫽N Le RaT ): ␦ S
⬇HRa⫺1/4S . The number of nodes of the irregular grid must be
such that at least five or six nodes are present in the solutal bound-
ary layer. On the other hand the irregular node distribution must
be smooth enough to describe the thicker thermal boundary layer.
This is the reason why a sinusoidal distribution has been preferred
to a geometrical progression: Most simulations have been per-
formed using a 93 node horizontal grid.
3 The accuracy of the calculations has been assessed by com-
parison with a reference solution obtained by an independent
pseudo-spectral Chebyshev algorithm described in LeQuéré 关9兴.
For a typical case of double diffusive convection (A⫽3, Fig. 1 Time evolution of the streamlines „a…, isotherms „b…,
Pr⫽11, Le⫽192, RaT ⫽106 , N⫽⫺22), the reference solution and isopleths „c… „A Ä3, PrÄ10, LeÄ210, RaT Ä9Ã105 , N ÄÀ22…
关10兴 has been compared to our finite volume calculations, using
either a centered or a hybrid discretization scheme, with two dif-
ferent time-steps ␦ t⫽5⫻10⫺5 and ␦ t⫽1.5⫻10⫺5 . The Nusselt mosolutal cells can develop in the bottom part of the stagnant
number for the centered scheme solution differs by less than two zone, in a region where the vertical density gradient is weaker.
percent from the reference solution for both time-steps while the The set of numerical simulations presented in the following
hybrid scheme underpredicts the Nusselt number by about nine sections has been performed in order to study the influence of the
percent. The relative differences on the Sherwood numbers are of dimensionless parameters on the average heat and mass transfer at
the order of one percent for both schemes and time-steps. As a the vertical walls and on the behavior of the thermal cell. The
consequence, the results presented hereafter have been obtained parametric study is limited to the influence of the thermal Ray-
from computations using a centered scheme and a time-step ␦ t leigh number RaT and of the buoyancy ratio N. The other param-
⫽5⫻10⫺5 . eters are kept unchanged: Pr⫽10 and Le⫽210 are typical of aque-
ous solutions and the aspect ratio, A⫽3. Moreover, the solutal
Rayleigh numbers have been chosen in such a way that the stag-
3 Results nant zone remains stable 共no thermosolutal cell兲. Hence, the range
The discussion of the results deals essentially with the heat and of parameters under study is ⫺8⭐N⭐⫺75, 2.7⫻105 ⭐RaT
mass transfer evolution, but we first recall a few aspects of the ⭐1.5⫻107 and 1.5⫻109 ⭐RaS ⭐2.5⫻1010.
flow structure.
Heat Transfer. The dimensionless heat flux in a vertical
Building Up of the Flow Structure. A typical time evolution cross section of the enclosure, the average Nusselt number, is
of the different fields is displayed in Fig. 1 for A⫽3, Pr⫽10, defined as
冕冋册
Le⫽210, RaT ⫽9⫻105 , N⫽⫺22. At early times of the process,
an ascending thermal natural convective flow develops along the
hot wall. The hot fluid horizontally crosses the top of the cavity
Nu⫽ 冕0
1
␸ 共 z 兲 dz⫽
0
1 ⳵␪
⳵x
⫺Pr共 u ␪ 兲 dz. (5)
and competes with the upward solutal boundary layer developing
along the cold wall. During an initial transient stage, the core gets A characteristic time evolution of the average Nusselt number
filled with the heated fluid by horizontal layering and a thermal at the hot wall (Nuh (t)) and at the cold wall (Nuc (t)) is depicted
recirculation cell is created, in the same way as in pure thermal in Fig. 2 for a set of values of the buoyancy ratio at a given
natural convection. The thermal cell remains uniformly at the ini- thermal Rayleigh number. A transient evolution corresponding to
tial concentration while the temperature field gets vertically strati- the development of the thermal boundary layer and to the building
fied. The ascending fluid along the cold wall has a lower concen- up of the temperature stratification in the thermal cell can be ob-
tration than the core and accumulates in the upper part of the served. This stage is also illustrated by the evolution of the tem-
cavity building up a very low velocity zone, called the ‘‘stagnant perature field depicted in Fig. 1 for N⫽⫺22. At early times of the
zone.’’ This zone is fed by the cold side only and is not penetrated process, the decrease in the hot wall Nusselt number is not mono-
by the fluid from the hot boundary layer. Heat transfer in the top tonic: This feature is also present in the pure thermal convection
of this zone is clearly diffusive while the concentration field is simulation (N⫽0) displayed in the figure, proving that it is due to
vertically stratified. Depending on the range of parameters, ther- the evolution of the temperature field. After a transient stage,
Fig. 4 Time evolution of the average heat transfer at the cold
and hot walls „A Ä3, PrÄ10, LeÄ210, RaT Ä2.5Ã106 , N ÄÀ8…
Fig. 2 Time evolution of the average heat transfer at the cold
and hot walls „A Ä3, PrÄ10, LeÄ210, RaT Ä9Ã105 …
tion in the pure thermal convection limit (N⫽0). If we refer to

Nuh (t)⫽Nuc (t) 共let us note t⫽t QS the corresponding time兲 and laminar thermal convection in fixed enclosures, for a given
then both the cold and hot average Nusselt number slightly de- Prandtl number, it is well known that the Nusselt number may be
creases. expressed as BRaT0.25 . The simulation in the pure thermal case at
Also visible in Fig. 2 is the influence of the solutal buoyancy Pr⫽10, yields a value B⫽0.312, which is reasonably close to the
force attenuating the average heat transfer. For a given value of coefficient identified in 共6兲. This value is also in good agreement
RaT , the Nusselt number indeed decreases with increasing 兩N兩. It with the 0.32 value reported in previous reference studies 共see
is expected that the average heat transfer increases with increasing 关11兴兲.
RaT , N or RaS being held constant. To correlate the influence of Let us now examine the further time evolution of the heat trans-
each dimensionless parameter on the Nusselt number, we search a fer after t QS . As previously said, there is a slow decrease in the
classical power-law dependence of Nu on N and RaT as Nu average Nusselt number, Nu, as defined by Eq. 共5兲 corresponding
⫽A兩 N 兩 a RaTb . As the process under study does not reach a steady to the dimensionless average heat flux on the whole height of the
state, the Nusselt number value used to establish such a correla- enclosure. As previously observed, the flow is structured in two
tion is the value at t⫽t QS . It can be checked that choosing the domains: a stagnant zone where the heat transfer is mainly diffu-
values of Nu at a time corresponding to the same height of the sive and a thermal convection cell of decreasing height, z TH . In
stagnant zone for all cases leads to the same correlation. The order to study the contribution of each zone to the heat flow, we
identification of the exponents from our set of results 共one decade will define a ‘‘cell’’ Nusselt number, Nucell, corresponding to the
for N and two decades for RaT 兲 leads to the following correlation, dimensionless heat flux on the height of the thermal cell:
冕
illustrated in Fig. 3: z TH
NuQS ⫽0.322共 1⫹ 兩 N 兩兲 ⫺0.17

RaT0.25 . (6) Nucell⫽ ␸ 共 z 兲 dz.
0
It should be noted that the 0.25 exponent for RaT arising from Figure 4 depicts the time evolution of those quantities for N
the identification is not particularly expected, since the boundary
⫽⫺8, RaT ⫽2.5⫻106 . We can observe that Nucell⬍Nu, the differ-
layer approximations used for the derivation of the classical scal-
ence corresponding to the contribution of the stagnant zone to the
ing laws in natural convection 共see 关8兴兲 do not necessarily apply in
global heat transfer. This diffusive contribution is not negligible
this range of parameters. The correlation has been derived, how-
and increases with time, from six percent at t⫽t QS (z TH
ever, in terms of (1⫹ 兩 N 兩 ) in order to recover a relevant correla-
⫽0.835) to 14 percent at t⫽0.8 (z TH ⫽0.640). Also plotted in the
figure are the previous Nusselt number correlation 共6兲 assessed at
t⫽t QS and the same correlation as a function of a time-dependent
thermal Rayleigh number based on z TH :
g ␤ T 共 T 1 ⫺T 0 兲 z TH
3
Racell⫽ .
␯␣
It can be seen that the Nucell decrease is identical to this latter
correlation, involving that the heat transfer evolution in the ther-
mal cell is directly related to the decrease in its height, Nucell
⬃z TH
3/4
. Moreover, since the Nusselt number is identical at both
walls, the heat balance between the stagnant zone and the thermal
cell is zero. This clearly denotes that the thermal cell behaves like
a differentially heated cavity of height z TH with adiabatic condi-
tions at the bottom and top boundaries, despite the presence of the
stagnant zone and the shear between the ascending solutal flow
and the downward thermal boundary layer along the cold wall.
Let us now consider the time evolution of the local Nusselt
number distribution on the cold wall along the normalized height
of the thermal cell (z/z TH ), displayed in Fig. 5. The figure shows
a significant increase in the local heat transfer at early times 共t
Fig. 3 Correlation NuÄ f „ N ,RaT … ⫽0.05 and 0.1兲 during the development of the stratification in the
the buoyancy ratio. After a transient stage corresponding to the
development of the solutal boundary layer and the building up of
the stagnant zone, the Sherwood number slightly decreases. Fig-
ure 6 points out an increase in the mass transfer with 兩N兩, for a
given value of RaS . As expected, it can be shown that the Sher-
wood number increases with increasing RaS , N, or RaT being
given. One might expect a negligible separate influence of 兩N兩 on
the mass transfer and a Sh⫺Ra0.25 S correlation, since the usual
boundary layer correlations apply for solutally dominated double
diffusive convection. This could not be quantitatively assessed
from our calculations, since the RaS range of our results is too
limited.
In addition, the time evolution of the average Sherwood number
for the purely solutal case is plotted in the figure. This situation,
representing the N→⬁ limit (RaT ⫽0), is the analog of the ‘‘fill-
ing box’’ configuration studied by Worster and Leitch 关12兴. The
general trend of the Sherwood number evolution is similar for the
different values of N represented in the figure, and the highest
value of N(N⫽⫺75) used in the simulation is seen to be very
close to the limit where the thermal effect has no impact on mass
transfer. The horizontal concentration profile for the purely solutal
Fig. 5 Local Nusselt number distribution at the cold wall along case is little affected even by the strong thermal effect at N⫽
the thermal cell at different times „A Ä3, PrÄ10, LeÄ210, RaT ⫺8 for which the relative difference on the average Sherwood
Ä9Ã105 , N ÄÀ8… number is about 12 percent. This feature is also confirmed by the
local mass transfer distribution along the cold wall 共not shown兲.
Along the thermal cell, the local mass transfer for N⫽⫺8 is
thermal cell. For the next three times, a striking feature of this lower than for pure solutal convection, while it is much closer in
representation is the similarity of the distribution especially in the the stagnant zone. Moreover, it can be shown that the local mass
20 percent top and bottom parts of the wall. Elsewhere, the local transfer at a given height remains remarkably constant in time in
heat transfer at a given height increases. Defining the average of the decreasing thermal cell. Thus, the overall decrease in the av-
the local Nusselt number on the thermal cell as erage Sherwood number is due to the variation in the stagnant
冕 z TH zone.
1 1
␸ 共 z 兲 dz⫽ Nu ,
z TH 0 z TH cell 4 Conclusion
it can be shown that this quantity slightly increases as the thermal The numerical simulation of transient thermosolutal convection
⫺1/4 of a binary fluid in a differentially heated enclosure with asym-
cell height reduces and varies as z TH . This feature confirms that
the thermal cell surprisingly behaves like a differentially heated metric concentration conditions is studied to approach the prob-
cavity of height z TH . lem of melting of a pure solid in a binary mixture. The present
analysis concerns the average heat and species transfer in the sys-
Mass Transfer. The dimensionless mass flux in a vertical tem, before destabilization of the stagnant zone.
cross section of the enclosure, the average Sherwood number, is The study, limited to a given range of parameters 共Pr and Le
defined as numbers of aqueous solutions, opposing buoyancy forces, domi-
Sh⫽ 冕冋0
1 ⳵␾
⳵x 册
⫺Sc共 u ␾ 兲 dz. (7)
nating solutal effect兲 at relatively high thermal Rayleigh numbers,
confirms the heat transfer characteristics observed in the experi-
ments by Mergui et al. 关13兴. However, the numerical simulations
A characteristic time evolution of the average Sherwood num- are not in quantitative agreement with the measurements, and the
ber at the cold wall is depicted in Fig. 6, for a set of simulations predicted time evolution of the building up process is still signifi-
obtained at a given solutal Rayleigh number and various values of cantly slower than in the experiments. This might be due to the
fact that the model assumptions concerning the boundary condi-
tions at the cold wall do not account for phase change. A space
and time variation of the interface temperature and composition
may arise from dissolution at the ice-liquid front in the areas
where the melting rate is low 共the stagnant zone兲. The model is
currently developed to solve the fully coupled interaction between
double diffusive convection and phase change in order to describe
the real boundary conditions at the interface.
Acknowledgments
The computations were made on the Cray C94 at IDRIS
共CNRS–France兲 under Grant No. 98-0336. The authors acknowl-
edge the support of the SPI Department of CNRS. The authors
wish to thank Patrick Le Quéré for his contribution to the numeri-
cal tests.
References
关1兴 Turner, J., 1979, Buoyancy Effects in Fluids, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK.
Fig. 6 Time evolution of the average mass transfer at the cold 关2兴 Ostrach, S., 1980, ‘‘Natural Convection With Combined Driving Forces,’’
wall „A Ä3, PrÄ10, LeÄ210, Ras Ä4.2Ã109 … Phys-Chem. Hydrodyn., 1, No. 1, pp. 233–247.
关3兴 Huppert, H. E., and Turner, J. S., 1989, ‘‘Ice Block Melting Into a Salinity et al. 关12兴 addressed transient heating of a square cavity through
Gradient,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 100, pp. 367–384.
关4兴 Bénard, C., Bénard, R., Bennacer, R., and Gobin, D., 1996, ‘‘Melting Driven
either one or two vertical walls. Jones and Briggs 关13兴 and Ka-
Thermosolutal Convection,’’ Phys. Fluids, 8, No. 1, pp. 112–130. zmierczak and Chinoda 关14兴 studied the effect of different bound-
关5兴 Beckermann, C., and Viskanta, R., 1988, ‘‘Double Diffusive Convection Due ary conditions in the same geometry. Recent advances include
to Melting,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 31, pp. 2077–2089. those of Kwak and Hyun 关15兴, Bergman and Hyun 关16兴, and Ay-
关6兴 Schütz, W., and Beer, H., 1991, ‘‘Heat Transfer in Melting of Ice Influenced
by Laminar, Double Diffusive Convection With Density Inversion of Water,’’
din et al. 关17兴. Magnetoconvection plays an important role in vari-
in 7th Int. Conf. Num. Methods Thermal Problems, Vol. 7, Stanford, CA, ous industrial fields. Examples include magnetic control of molten
Pineridge Press, Swansea, UK, p. 144. iron flow in the steel industry, liquid metal cooling in nuclear
关7兴 Patankar, S., 1980 Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, Hemisphere, reactors and magnetic suppression of molten semiconducting ma-
Washington, DC.
关8兴 Bejan, A., 1995, Convection Heat Transfer, Wiley, New York.
terials. Studies of magnetic field on low Prandtl number fluids
关9兴 LeQuéré, P., 1991, ‘‘Accurate Solutions to the Square Thermally Driven Cav- include those of Fumizawa 关18兴, Okada and Ozoe 关19兴, and
ity at High Rayleigh Number,’’ Comput. Fluids, 20, No. 1, pp. 29–41. Tagawa and Ozoe 关20兴. Recently Mobner and Muller 关21兴 have
关10兴 LeQuéré, P., 1998, personal communication. made a complete investigation of three-dimensional magnetocon-
关11兴 Henkes, R., 1990, ‘‘Natural Convection Boundary Layers,’’ Ph.D. thesis, TU
Delft–NL.
vection in rectangular cavities. Bejan 关22兴, Gebhart 关23兴, Alchaar
关12兴 Worster, M. G., and Leitch, A. M., 1985, ‘‘Laminar Free Convection in Con- 关24兴, and Eckert et al. 关25兴 provide a good review of literature on
fined Regions,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 156, pp. 301–319. convection in enclosures.
关13兴 Mergui, S., Joly, D., Feroual, B., Bénard, C., and Gobin, D., 1998 ‘‘Experi- The dependence of thermal conductivity of a few liquid metals/
ments on Phase-Change Processes Controlled by Convective Heat and Mass
Transfer,’’ in Modelling, Casting, Welding and Advanced Solidification Pro-
alkali metals 共PrⰆ1兲 on temperature are shown in Fig. 1共a兲共关26兴兲.
cesses VIII, TMS Publishers, San Diego, CA, pp. 721–728. From this we infer that thermal conductivity is nearly linear
against temperature. Most published works that use low Prandtl
number fluids with large-scale temperature variation 共for example,
关27兴 and 关28兴兲 neglect the dependence of thermal conductivity on
temperature. Also the turbulent eddy diffusivity is much less than
Natural Convection in Low Prandtl molecular diffusivity. Hence in the present analysis we shall con-
Number Fluids With a Vertical centrate on the effect of variable thermal conductivity of the fluid
on the laminar heat transfer characteristics.
Magnetic Field
2 The Equations
S. Saravanan Consider a two-dimensional square cavity of height H and
Junior Research Fellow length L 共Fig. 1共b兲兲 filled with the fluid. The cartesian coordinates
(x,y) with the corresponding velocity components (u, v ) are as
indicated in the figure. The vertical walls located at y⫽0 and y
P. Kandaswamy ⫽L are isothermal but maintained at different temperatures ␪ h
Professor and ␪ c ( ␪ c ⬍ ␪ h ), respectively. The bottom and top of the cavity
are assumed to be thermally insulated. The gravity g and magnetic
Department of Mathematics, Bharathiar University, field B o act normal to the y-direction. To analyze the natural con-
Coimbatore 641046, Tamil Nadu, India vection of liquid metal in the presence of a magnetic field, it is
assumed that the induced magnetic field and viscous heating are
e-mail: pgk@bharathi.ernet.in
negligible and the liquid metal is not magnetized. The thermal
conductivity k of the fluid is assumed to vary linearly with tem-
Keywords: Cavities, Finite Difference, Heat Transfer, Liquid
perature as
Metals, Natural Convection
k 共 ␪ 兲 ⫽k c 关 1⫺a 共 ␪ ⫺ ␪ c 兲兴 (1)
1 Introduction where a is the temperature coefficient of thermal conductivity and
Proper selection of coolant is crucial in many thermodynamical the subscript c refers to the reference state at the cold wall.
systems. For example, in the case of nuclear reactors an enormous The nondimensional equations governing the laminar two-
amount of heat energy is released. Nowadays liquid metals/alkali dimensional incompressible flow of the fluid under consideration
metals and their alloys 共like NaK alloy兲 are used in slender tubes with constant physical properties except density in the external
surrounding the nuclear core to absorb and remove the heat 关1兴. force and thermal conductivity are
There are some special features connected with the heat transfer in T ␶ ⫹UT X ⫹VT Y
these metals. These have high thermal conductivity and hence low
Prandtl number ranging from 0.005 to 0.03. Especially the liquid ⫽ 共 1/Prc 兲兵 T XX ⫹T Y Y ⫺ ␩ 关 TT XX ⫹TT Y Y ⫹T 2X ⫹T 2Y 兴其 (2)
alkali metals have low density, low viscosity and high thermal
conductivity which make them suitable for heat transfer media ␨ ␶ ⫹U ␨ X ⫹V ␨ Y ⫽Gr T Y ⫹ ␨ XX ⫹ ␨ Y Y ⫺Ha2 V X (3)
共coolant兲 in exothermic reactions. Moreover the low melting and ⌿ XX ⫹⌿ Y Y ⫽⫺ ␨ (4)
high boiling points of these metals enable to handle them in the
liquid state with high temperature more efficiently. U⫽ ␺ Y , V⫽⫺ ␺ X , where ␨ ⫽V X ⫺U Y , (5)
The pioneering works in convection in tubes and enclosures are
with the initial and boundary conditions
those of Lighthill 关2兴 and Wilkes and Churchill 关3兴, respectively.
Earlier studies on natural convection in enclosures include experi- ␶ ⫽0: U⫽V⫽⌿⫽T⫽0; 0⭐X, Y ⭐1
mental studies of Eckert and Carlson 关4兴, Elder 关5兴, and numerical
studies, for example, by Polezhaev 关6兴, Catton et al. 关7兴, and Mal- ␶ ⬎0: ⌿⫽⌿ X ⫽⌿ Y ⫽0, T⫽1 Y ⫽0
(6)
linson and de Vahl Davis 关8兴. In relation to direct numerical simu- ⌿⫽⌿ X ⫽⌿ Y ⫽0, T⫽0; Y ⫽1
lation of convection in low Prandtl number fluids, we refer to
Jones 关9兴 and Hadid and Roux 关10兴. Hall et al. 关11兴 and Nicolette ⌿⫽⌿ X ⫽⌿ Y ⫽0, T X ⫽0; X⫽0 and 1.
The diffusion scales are X⫽x/L, Y ⫽y/L, U⫽uL/ ␯ , V⫽ v L/ ␯ ,
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Oct. 1, 1999; ␶ ⫽t ␯ /L 2 , ⌿⫽␸/␯, ␨ ⫽ ␻ L 2 / ␯ , T⫽( ␪ ⫺ ␪ c )/( ␪ h⫺ ␪ c ). The vor-
revision received, Apr. 4, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: P. Ayyaswamy. ticity at the walls is calculated using ␨ wall⫽⫺⌿ nn where n is the
Fig. 1 „a… The dependence of k on ␪ ; „b… physical configuration; „c… correlation of present numerical results with
others; „d… transient responses of Nu* for various mesh sizes
Table 1 Effect of ␩ on steady-state Nu*: „Prc Ä0.054, A Ä1…

outward drawn normal to the surface. The nondimensional param-
eters are the Grashof number Gr⫽g ␤ ( ␪ h ⫺ ␪ c )L 3 / ␯ 2 , the Prandtl Gr Ha ␩ Steady-State Nu* Max ⌿
number Prc ⫽ ␯ / ␣ c , the Hartmann number Ha⫽B o L( ␴ / ␮ ) 1/2, the 4 0 0 1.1972 27
aspect ratio A⫽H/L⫽1 and ␩ ⫽( ␪ h ⫺ ␪ c ). The local Nusselt 2⫻10
共1.11444 关28兴兲
number is Nu⫽T Y at the hot wall. The average Nusselt number is
0.5 1.8633 25
expressed as
0.9 4.4665 21
Nu* ⫽
1
A 冕0
A
Nu dX.
50 0
0.5
0.9
1.0013
1.4757
3.7905
1.05
1.1
1.02
100 0 1.0002 0.27
3 Numerical Solution 0.5 1.4734 0.32
0.9 3.7861 0.3
The Eqs. 共2兲–共6兲 are solved numerically by finite difference
technique with a uniform mesh. The numerical procedure fol- 2⫻105 0 0 2.2296 102
共1.91219 关28兴兲
lowed is similar to that of Jones and Cai 关29兴 except for the
0.5 3.5737 87
advective terms. We use forward difference and central difference
0.9 7.1139 74
approximations for time and space derivatives, respectively, in the 50 0 1.0578 10.3
advective terms. The Alternating Direction Implicit scheme 共关30兴兲 0.5 1.6046 10.8
and Successive Over Relaxation method are used in each time 0.9 4.0047 9.6
step. This is repeated for each of the next time levels until the 100 0 1.0059 2.76
steady-state solution is obtained satisfying the convergent criteria 0.5 1.4869 3.2
used by Rudraiah et al. 关28兴. For verifying the code, we used the 0.9 3.8070 3.1
results of Wilkes and Churchill 关3兴, Rudraiah et al. 关28兴, and the
Fig. 2 „a…, „b…, and „c… Steady-state isotherms for GrÄ2Ã104 , ␩Ä0, 0.5 and
0.9; „d… velocity profiles at midheight „ X Ä0.5… for GrÄ2Ã104 , different ␩; „e…
and „f… steady-state isotherms for GrÄ2Ã105 , ␩Ä0 and 0.9
experimental correlation of Jakob 关31兴. All these papers provide comes to a steady state with Nu*⫽1.8633. This together with the
steady-state Nu* for natural convection with Boussinesq approxi- decrease in stream function values shows conductive mode of heat
mation. By setting ␩⫽0, we found our results match well 共Fig. transfer is reduced. Thus the heat transfer from the hot wall to the
1共c兲 and Table 1兲. It is well known that the finite difference com- adjoining fluid begins to drop. Further increase in ␩ confirms the
putation suffers the numerical errors, especially the truncation er- above fact. Thus in general the heat transfer at the hot wall does
ror. Thus the computations were carried out with 31⫻31, 41⫻41, not get transported well to the cold wall because of the reduction
51⫻51 and 61⫻61 grids. Figure 1共d兲 shows the effect of grid size in the conduction and convection modes. For higher Gr values a
on the average Nusselt number for Gr⫽2⫻105 , ␩⫽0.5, Ha⫽0, typical flow behavior is seen with increased speed of circulation
and Ha⫽50. We observe that these similar curves attain almost 共see Table 1兲. Figures 2共e兲 and 共f兲 depict the same behavior for
the same steady-state value. The slight increase in the values of ␩⫽0, 0.9 at Gr⫽2⫻105 with a stratified core corresponding to
steady-state Nu* is due to the increase in the number of grid higher Gr as reported by Bejan 关22兴.
points at the hot wall. Hence it is assumed that the computational
results from the present code are independent of the grid size. The
detailed results in the remainder of the paper are all from a 41⫻41
grid.
4 Results and Discussion

The effect of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity on
buoyancy induced convection in the presence of a uniform mag-
netic field is investigated numerically. The computations are car-
ried out by fixing Gr as 2⫻104 and 2⫻105 , Prc as 0.054 corre-
sponding to liquid metals and varying ␩. ␩ is a measure for the
variation of the thermal conductivity. Increase in the value of ␩
denotes a decrease in k( ␪ ). For example, in the case of liquid
Sodium 共Pr⫽0.011兲, a⫽0.00051 and hence ␩ ranges from 0.1 to
0.31 for a temperature difference of 200 K to 600 K by fixing the
cavity length as 0.01 m. The value of a are still higher for some
liquid alloys whose deviation in k( ␪ ) against ␪ is more. The range
for ␩ is 0⭐ ␩ ⬍1. ␩⫽1 is excluded as it corresponds to k h ⫽0.
Figures 2共a兲 to 2共d兲 show the effect of thermal conductivity
variation on buoyancy driven convection in the absence of mag-
netic field Ha⫽0 for Gr⫽2⫻104 . Figure 2共a兲 corresponds to ␩⫽0
共constant k( ␪ ), i.e., k( ␪ )⫽k c 兲 and 2共b兲 and 共c兲 correspond to
␩⫽0.5, 0.9 共varying k( ␪ ), i.e., k( ␪ )⬍k c 兲, respectively. Stream-
lines are not displayed here as they depict a simple clockwise
rotating unicellular flow pattern. We notice that as ␩ increases the
lower part of the isotherms near the hot wall begins to crowd and
starts forming a thermal boundary layer. This is clearly seen in
Fig. 2共c兲 showing only a meagre quantity of heat is propagated Fig. 3 „a… Steady-state streamlines for GrÄ2Ã105 , HaÄ100,
from the hot wall to cold wall across the cavity. We also observe ␩Ä0; „b… and „c… steady-state isotherms and streamlines for
from Fig. 2共d兲 and Table 1 that an increase in ␩ reduces the GrÄ2Ã105 , HaÄ100 and ␩Ä0.5; „d… velocity profiles at mid-
convective flow. Table 1 shows the heat transfer rate for ␩⫽0.5 height for GrÄ2Ã105 , HaÄ100 and different ␩
When an external magnetic field of value Ha⫽100 is applied ␪ c ⫽ cold wall temperature 共K兲
parallel to gravity, a horizontal body force is induced. So the ␪ h ⫽ hot wall temperature 共K兲
streamlines are stretched horizontally and isotherms become ␩ ⫽ dimensionless temperature coefficient of thermal con-
nearly parallel and equidistant, i.e., the magnetic field retards the ductivity (a( ␪ h ⫺ ␪ c ))
vertical velocity of the fluid particles except near the hot and cold ␸ ⫽ stream function 共m2/s兲
walls where the forces due to local density variations dominate. ␮ ⫽ dynamic viscosity of fluid 共Pa.s兲
This is also observed from the nearly vanishing vertical velocity at ␯ ⫽ kinematic viscosity of fluid⫽␮/␳ 共m2/s兲
the midheight in the middle of the cavity. Figure 3共a兲 shows the ␳ ⫽ density of fluid 共kg/m3兲
corresponding streamlines. But no attraction of streamlines to- ␴ ⫽ electrical conductivity of fluid 共1/共⍀.m兲兲
wards the hot wall is observed. This attraction is an expected one ␶ ⫽ dimensionless time
because of the Lorentz force. Figures 3共b兲 and 共c兲 show the flow ␻ ⫽ vorticity 共1/s兲
pattern when Gr⫽2⫻105 , Ha⫽100, and ␩⫽0.5. Now the stream- ␺ ⫽ dimensionless stream function
lines are attracted towards the hot wall as anticipated and hence ␨ ⫽ dimensionless vorticity
the convection across the cavity is highly damped. This shows the
drawback of taking k to be a temperature-independent quantity. Subscript
Figure 3共d兲 shows the increase in the vertical velocity near the hot c ⫽ reference state at the cold wall
wall due to attraction. Also the isotherms are attracted to the hot h ⫽ reference state at the hot wall
wall, with an increase in steady-state Nu*. This implies that the
heat energy from the hot wall remain only in the neighborhood of
the hot wall because of the reduced conductive and highly reduced
convective modes. References
关1兴 Etherington, H., 1958, Nuclear Engineering Handbook, McGraw-Hill, New
5 Conclusion York.
关2兴 Lighthill, M. J., 1953, ‘‘Theoretical Considerations on Free Convection in
The effect of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity on Tubes,’’ Q. J. Mech. Appl. Math., 6, Part 5, pp. 398–439.
the buoyancy induced convection in low Prandtl number fluids 关3兴 Wilkes, J. O., and Churchill, S. W., 1966, ‘‘The Finite Difference Computation
of Natural Convection in a Rectangular Enclosure,’’ AIChE J., 12, No. 1, pp.
contained in a square cavity is studied. It is found that an increase 161–166.
in ␩ reduces both conductive and convective modes of heat trans- 关4兴 Eckert, E. R. G., and Carlson, W. O., 1961, ‘‘Natural Convection in an Air
fer in the absence of a magnetic field. In the presence of a vertical Layer Enclosed Between Two Vertical Plates With Different Temperatures,’’
magnetic field, this increase in ␩ produces a highly damped con- Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 2, pp. 106–120.
关5兴 Elder, W. J., 1965, ‘‘Laminar Free Convection in a Vertical Slot,’’ J. Fluid
vection 共because of the attraction of convective cell towards the Mech., 23, pp. 77–98.
hot wall兲 and conduction. This is expected in laminar convection 关6兴 Polezhaev V. I., 1967, ‘‘Numerical Solution of a System of Two Dimensional
since all heat transfer from the wall must be through molecular Unsteady Navier-Stokes Equations for a Compressible Gas in a Closed Re-
conduction. We can conclude that it is advantageous to use low gion,’’ Fluid Dyn., 2, pp. 70–74.
关7兴 Catton, I., Ayyaswamy, P. S., and Clever, R. M., 1974, ‘‘Natural Convection
Prandtl number liquid metals or alloys as coolants in fast reactors Flow in a Finite, Rectangular Slot Arbitrarily Oriented With Respect to the
whose thermal conductivity does not depend much on tempera- Gravity Vector,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 17, pp. 173–184.
ture. 关8兴 Mallinson, G. D., and de Vahl Davis, G., 1977, ‘‘Three Dimensional Natural
Convection in a Box: A Numerical Study,’’ J. Fluid Mech., 83, 1–31.
关9兴 Jones, I. P., 1982, ‘‘Low Prandtl Number Free Convection in a Vertical Slot,’’
Acknowledgment AERE Harewell Report R-10416.
关10兴 Hadid, H. B., and Roux, B., 1987, ‘‘Oscillatory Buoyancy Driven Flow in a
One of the authors 共S.S.兲 thanks CSIR, India, for its financial Horizontal Liquid Metal Layer,’’ ESA-SP-256, pp. 477–485.
support through the Junior Research Fellowship 共NET兲. 关11兴 Hall, J. D., Bejan, A., and Chaddock, J. B., 1988, ‘‘Transient Natural Convec-
tion in a Rectangular Enclosure With One Heated Side Wall,’’ Int. J. Heat
Mass Transf., 9, pp. 396–404.
Nomenclature 关12兴 Nicolette, V. F., Yang, K. T., and Lloyd, J. R., 1985, ‘‘Transient Cooling by
a ⫽ temperature coefficient of thermal conductivity 共1/K兲 Natural Convection in Two-dimensional Square Enclosure,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
Transf., 28, pp. 1721–1732.
A ⫽ aspect ratio⫽H/L⫽1 关13兴 Jones, D. N., and Briggs, D. G., 1989, ‘‘Periodic Two-Dimensional Cavity
Bo ⫽ magnetic flux density 共Wb/m2兲 Flow: Effect of Linear Horizontal Thermal Boundary Condition,’’ ASME J.
g ⫽ acceleration due to gravity 共m/s2兲 Heat Transfer, 111, pp 86–91.
关14兴 Kazmierczak, M., and Chinoda, Z., 1992, ‘‘Buoyancy Driven Flow in an En-
Gr ⫽ Grashof number⫽g ␤ ( ␪ h ⫺ ␪ c )L 3 / ␯ 2 closure With Time Periodic Boundary Conditions,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf.,
H ⫽ height of the cavity 共m兲 35, No. 6, pp. 1507–1518.
Ha ⫽ Hartmann number⫽B o L( ␴ / ␮ ) 1/2 关15兴 Kwak, H. S., and Hyun, J. M., 1996, ‘‘Natural Convection in an Enclosure
k ⫽ thermal conductivity of fluid 共W/mK兲 Having a Vertical Side Wall With Time Varying Temperature,’’ J. Fluid
Mech., 329, pp. 65–88.
L ⫽ length of the cavity 共m兲关16兴 Bergman, T. L., and Hyun, M. T., 1996, ‘‘Simulation of Two-Dimensional
Nu ⫽ local Nusselt number⫽(T Y ) 兩 Y ⫽0 Thermosolutal Convection in Liquid Metals Induced by Horizontal Tempera-
Nu* ⫽ average Nusselt number⫽(1/A) 兰 A0 Nu dX ture and Species Gradients,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 39, No. 12, pp. 2883–
2894.
p ⫽ pressure 共Pa兲关17兴 Aydin, O., Unal, A., and Ayhan, T., 1999, ‘‘Natural Convection in Rectangu-
Pr ⫽ Prandtl number 共␯/␣兲 lar Enclosures Heated From One Side and Cooled From the Ceiling,’’ Int. J.
t ⫽ time 共s兲 Heat Mass Transf., 42, pp. 2345–2355.
T ⫽ dimensionless temperature 关18兴 Fumizawa, M., 1980, ‘‘Natural Convection Experiment With Liquid NaK Un-
der Transverse Magnetic Field,’’ J. Nucl. Sci. Technol., 17, No. 2, pp. 98–105.
u ⫽ vertical velocity 共m/s兲关19兴 Okada, K., and Ozoe, H., 1992, ‘‘Experimental Heat Transfer Rates of Natural
U ⫽ dimensionless vertical velocity Convection of Molten Gallium Suppressed Under an External Magnetic Field
v ⫽ horizontal velocity 共m/s兲 in Either x, y or z-direction,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 114, pp. 107–114.
V ⫽ dimensionless horizontal velocity 关20兴 Tagawa, T., and Ozoe, H., 1997, ‘‘Enhancement of Heat Transfer Rate by
Application of a Static Magnetic Field During Natural Convection of Liquid
x ⫽ vertical coordinate 共m兲 Metal in Cube,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 119, pp. 265–271.
X ⫽ dimensionless vertical coordinate 关21兴 Mobner, R., and Muller, U., 1999, ‘‘A Numerical Investigation of Three-
y ⫽ horizontal coordinate 共m兲 Dimensional Magnetoconvection in Rectangular Cavities,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass
Y ⫽ dimensionless horizontal coordinate Transf., 42, pp. 1111–1121.
关22兴 Bejan, A., 1984, Convection Heat Transfer, Wiley, New York.
␣ ⫽ thermal diffusivity of fluid 共m2/s兲关23兴 Gebhart, B., Jalurial, Y., Mahajan, R. L., and Sammakia, B., 1988, Buoyancy
␤ ⫽ volumetric coefficient of expansion of fluid 共1/K兲 Induced Flows and Transports, Hemisphere, Washington, DC.
␪ ⫽ temperature of fluid 共K兲关24兴 Alchaar, S., Vasseur, P., and Bilgen, E., 1995, ‘‘Natural Convection Heat
Transfer in a Rectangular Enclosure With a Transverse Magnetic Field,’’ Introduction
ASME J. Heat Transfer, 117, pp. 668–673.
关25兴 Eckert, E. R. G., Goldstein, R. J., Ibele, W. E., Patankar, S. V., Simon, T. W., Radiative heat transfer within enclosures having black or
Strykowski, P. J., Tamma, K. K., Kuehn, T. H., Bar-Cohen, A., Heberlein, J. diffuse-gray surfaces, where heat transfer is only by radiation, is
V. R., Davidson, J. H., Bischof, J., Kulacki, F., and Kortshagen, U., 1999,
‘‘Heat Transfer—A Review of 1995 Literature,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 42, generally formulated by single or simultaneous linear Fredholm
pp. 2717–2797. integral equations of the second kind for the unknown surface
关26兴 Lide, D. R., 1993, Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press, Boca temperature or heat flux distributions 共关1,2兴兲. Integral equations
Raton, FL.
关27兴 Hadid, H. B., and Roux, B., 1992, ‘‘Buoyancy and Thermocapillary Driven
also arise when radiation exchange is considered within a radiat-
Flows in Differentially Heated Cavities for Low Prandtl Number Fluids,’’ J. ing medium such as a gas. These integral equations involve con-
Fluid Mech., 235, pp. 1–36. figuration factors that, for most geometries, are not of simple
关28兴 Rudraiah, N., Venkatachalappa, M., and Subbaraya, C. K., 1995, ‘‘Combined forms. There is usually little chance that exact solutions in closed
Surface Tension and Buoyancy Driven Convection in a Rectangular Open
Cavity in the Presence of a Magnetic Field,’’ Int. J. Non-Linear Mech., 35,
form can be found, so numerical solutions are used. Numerical
pp. 759–770. solutions for general linear Fredholm integral equations of thesec-
关29兴 Jones, G. F., and Cai, J., 1993, ‘‘Analysis of a Transient Asymmetrically ond kind have been studied by many authors using Galerkin, col-
Heated/Cooled Open Thermosyphon,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer, 115, p. 621. location, and quadrature 共or Nyström兲 methods 共see, e.g., 关3兴 and
关30兴 Jaluria, M., and Torrance, K. E., 1986, Computational Heat Transfer, Hemi-
sphere, pp. 178–183.
the references quoted there兲. The use of some of these methods for
关31兴 Jakob, M., 1949, Heat Transfer, Vol. 1, John Wiley and Sons, New York. radiation integral equations can be found in, e.g., the books of
Siegel and Howell 关1兴 and Sparrow and Cess 关2兴 and the refer-
ences quoted there. These numerical methods transform the inte-
gral equation to a set of algebraic equations that can be solved in
principle by direct or iterative methods. In practice, however, in-
Approximate Solution of a Class stability, slow convergence, and excessive computation may limit
of Radiative Heat Transfer Problems either method. Hence, despite the continued advance in computers
and numerical methods, approximate methods remain of interest
and utility in this field.
H. Qiao Approximate solution procedures have been proposed for solv-
Research Assistant Professor, Department of ing the Fredholm integral equations of the second kind arising in
Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, radiative heat transfer 共see, e.g., Siegel and Howell 关1兴, Chapter 7兲
and Sparrow and Cess 关2兴, Chapter 3兲, which transform the inte-
City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, gral equation to a linear ordinary differential equation that can be
Kowloon, Hong Kong solved analytically or numerically if the boundary conditions can
e-mail: mehong@cityu.edu.hk be specified. One such an approach is the Taylor series expansion
method which was proposed by Krishnan and Sundaram 关4兴 and
Y. Ren Perlmutter and Siegel 关5兴 for solving an integral equation of ra-
diative heat transfer within a gray circular tube. The physical idea
Research Fellow, Fujitsu Parallel Computing Research
that motivates this method is that the geometric configuration fac-
Centre, Imperial College, 180 Queen’s Gage, tor can often decrease quite rapidly as the distance is increased
London SW7 2BZ, UK between the two elements exchanging radiation. This means that
e-mail: yr@ic.ac.uk the radiative heat balance at a given location may be significantly
influenced only by the radiative fluxes leaving surface elements in
B. Zhang1 the immediate vicinity, so that a Taylor series expansion can be
made for the unknown radiative heat flux distribution in order to
Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematical and Information obtain a good approximation to the integral in the radiative inte-
Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK gral equation. This transforms the integral equation to a linear
e-mail: b.zhang@coventry.ac.uk ordinary differential equation with variable coefficients and re-
quires the manufacture of an appropriate number of boundary
conditions 共关4,5,1,2兴兲. Though the boundary conditions may be
An approximate solution is presented for a class of radiative heat derived, as illustrated in the paper of Perlmutter and Siegel 关5兴,
transfer problems within enclosures having black or diffuse-gray from the physical constraints in the system, such as symmetry or
surfaces based on a modified Taylor series expansion method; an overall heat balance, it is in general very difficult to determine
such radiative transfer problems are generally represented by in- them. The method is thus difficult to be extended to deal with
tegral equations. The approach avoids use of any boundary/initial enclosures involving more than one or two surfaces. To avoid use
conditions associated with the original Taylor series expansion of boundary conditions a collocation method utilizing the first
method and leads to an approximate solution in a simple closed term of the Taylor series expansion was proposed by Choi and
form to the radiant integral equations, which can be computed Churchill 关6兴 to build a higher-order approximation and applied to
straightforwardly on a modern personal computer using symbolic radiative exchange integral equations between two parallel plates
computing codes such as Maple. The method can be effectively and within a cylinder cavity. It should be remarked that as pointed
and efficiently applied to deal with enclosures involving more out by Choi and Churchill 关6兴 the accuracy of their collocation
than one or two surfaces, for which direct numerical integration method depends on the location of the collocation points.
may be subject to instability, or require an excessive amount of In this note we present a numerical study of a class of radiative
computation. The computed numerical results for representative heat transfer problems, which are formulated as Fredholm integral
thermal problems are in excellent agreement with those obtained equations of the second kind, by making use of a novel modifica-
by other numerical approaches. 关S0022-1481共00兲00203-6兴 tion of the Taylor series expansion method. The approach is
simple yet effective and avoids use of any boundary conditions
Keywords: Computational Heat Transfer, Numerical Methods associated with the original Taylor series expansion method. In
fact, our approach leads to an approximate solution in a simple,
1 closed form which can be easily and efficiently computed on a
modern personal computer using symbolic computing codes such
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, June 24, as Maple. So the approach can be easily applied to deal with
1999; revision received, March 30, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: P. Menguc. enclosures involving more than one or two surfaces, e.g., radiative
exchange in a catalytic monolith with square or circular channels Radiant Flux Within a Cylindrical Tube
where a system of radiative integral equations was used to model
As an example we consider a circular, cylindrical tube of diam-
the radiative exchange 共see, e.g., 关7兴兲. Note that, since the system
eter d and length l 共see Fig. 1兲.
of integral equations is often coupled with a complex system of
The temperature distribution along the cylindrical wall is a
differential and algebraic equations that models channel interac-
known function of X⫽x/d. The ends of the cylinder at X⫽0 and
tion and other processes in the catalytic combustor, the conven-
at X⫽l/d⫽L may be considered to be black surfaces at T 1 and
tional numerical methods for the integral equations often makes
T 2 , respectively, or open to blackbody surroundings at these tem-
the problem intractable 共see 关7兴兲. To illustrate the efficiency and
peratures. Suppose that the emissivity ⑀ is the same for all sur-
accuracy of the method in the present note we study an example
faces. Then the governing equation for the dimensionless radiosity
of radiant heat transfer problems in detail.
is given by
冋
␤ 共 X 兲 ⫽ ⑀␪ 4 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 F 共 X 兲 ⫹ ␪ 41 F 共 L⫺X 兲
⫹ 冕0
L
册
␤ 共 ␰ 兲 K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 d ␰ , (1)
where ␤ (X)⫽B(x)/ ␴ T 41 is the dimensionless radiosity on the sur-

face of the cylinder, ␪ (X)⫽T(X)/T 1 is the specified dimension-
less temperature distribution with T(X) being the absolute tem-
perature along the cylindrical wall, and ␪ 1 ⫽T 2 /T 1 is the
dimensionless temperature of the end of the cylinder at X⫽L 共see,
e.g., 关6,1,2兴兲. The function F(X) is the configuration factor from
the end of the cylinder at X⫽0 to a differential ring at X on the
Fig. 1 Model for radiative transfer between a gray cylindrical cylindrical wall and is given as follows 共see Eq. 共34兲兲 in Appendix
tube C of Siegel and Howell 关1兴兲:
Fig. 2 Comparison of approximations and numerical solution for dimension-

less radiosity on inside surface of a cylinder with ␧ Ä L Ä0.1
less radiosity on inside surface of a cylinder with ␧Ä0.5 and L Ä1
X 2 ⫹0.5 Equation 共4兲 was first solved by using the product Nyström
F共 X 兲⫽ ⫺X, (2) method and an N-point equal-interval quadrature rule with arbi-
共 X 2 ⫹1 兲 1/2
trary weight suggested by Press et al. 共关8兴, pp. 791–794兲. The
and F(L⫺X) is the configuration factor from the end of the cyl- mesh size N was taken very large 共N⫽20L for 共4兲兲 so as to pro-
inder at X⫽L to a differential ring at X on the cylindrical wall and vide accurate numerical solutions for evaluation of the accuracy
can be obtained from 共2兲 by substituting L⫺X for X. The function of the approximations developed below.
K( 兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩 ) is the configuration factor between two differential- Zeroth-Order Approximation. Taking the first term of the
rings at X and ␰ on the cylindrical wall 共see Eq. 共33兲 in Appendix Taylor series expansion at ␰ ⫽X of ␤共␰兲, namely ␤ (X), in the
C of Siegel and Howell 关1兴兲 given by integral of 共4兲 gives
K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 ⫽1⫺
兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩关共 X⫺ ␰ 兲 2 ⫹1.5兴
关共 X⫺ ␰ 兲 2 ⫹1 兴 3/2
. (3) ␤ 共 X 兲 ⬇ f 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 ␤ 共 X 兲冕 0
L
K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 d ␰ .
Defining f (X)⫽ ⑀␪ 4 (X)⫹(1⫺ ⑀ ) 关 F(X)⫹ ␪ 41 F(L⫺X) 兴 , we can This leads to the zeroth-order approximation to the solution ␤ (X):
write Eq. 共1兲 as
f 共X兲
冕
␤ 0共 X 兲 ⫽ , (5)
L 1⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I L 共 X 兲
␤ 共 X 兲 ⫽ f 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 ␤ 共 ␰ 兲 K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 d ␰ . (4)
0
where
冕
This is a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind with the L
kernel K( 兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩 ) being continuous but having discontinuous de- I L共 X 兲 ⫽ K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 d ␰ ⫽1⫺F 共 X 兲 ⫺F 共 L⫺X 兲
rivatives at X⫽ ␰ . 0
less radiosity on inside surface of a cylinder with ␧ Ä0.5 and L Ä5
and F is given by 共2兲. As is seen in the first model problem, this Integrals in the above equation can be evaluated analytically or
approximation is only of qualitative value in most cases. Higher- numerically so, if ␤ ( m ) (X) can be determined, the nth-order ap-
order approximations can be derived similarly as before but a proximation ␤ n (X) to ␤ (X) will follow from 共7兲.
modification is needed since the kernel K( 兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩 ) has discontinu-
ous derivatives at X⫽ ␰ . First-Order Approximation. Note that the integral in 共4兲 can
be split into the sum of two integrals:
Higher-Order Approximations. Improved approxima-
冕冕
tions can be obtained as before by taking more terms of the X L
Taylor series expansion at ␰ ⫽X of ␤共␰兲 in the integral of 共4兲. K 共 X⫺ ␰ 兲 ␤ 共 ␰ 兲 d ␰ ⫹ K 共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 ␤ 共 ␰ 兲 d ␰ .
Thus, if 0 X
Thus differentiating both sides of 共4兲 gives

1
␤ 共 ␰ 兲 ⬇ ␤ 共 X 兲 ⫹ ␤ ⬘ 共 X 兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 ⫹ . . . ⫹ ␤ 共 n 兲共 X 兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 n ,
n!
(6) ␤ ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫽ f ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲冋冕 0
X
K ⬘ 共 X⫺ ␰ 兲 ␤ 共 ␰ 兲 d ␰
册
it follows that
冕 L
冕 L ⫺ K ⬘ 共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 ␤ 共 ␰ 兲 d ␰ .
X
␤ 共 X 兲 ⬇ f 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 ␤ 共 X 兲 K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲 d ␰
0
Taking ␤ ( ␰ )⫽ ␤ (X) in the above integrals and rearranging lead to
⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 ␤ ⬘ 共 X 兲冕
0
L
K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 d ␰ ⫹ . . .
the result
␤ ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⬇ f ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴 ␤ 共 X 兲 . (8)
⫹
1⫺ ⑀ 共 n 兲
n!
␤ 共X兲冕
0
L
K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 n d ␰ . (7) Substituting this into 共7兲 with n⫽1 implies the first-order approxi-
mation ␤ 1 (X) to ␤ (X):
f 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I 1L 共 X 兲 f ⬘ 共 X 兲 R 共 X 兲 ⫽ f 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I 1L 共 X 兲 f ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I 2L 共 X 兲
␤ 1共 X 兲 ⫽ ,
1⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I L 共 X 兲 ⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 2 I 1L 共 X 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴 ⫻ 兵 f ⬙ 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴 f ⬘ 共 X 兲其
(9)
where A 共 X 兲 ⫽1⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 I L 共 X 兲 ⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 2 I 1L 共 X 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴
冕 L ⫺ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲 2 I 2L 共 X 兲兵 K ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫹K ⬘ 共 L⫺X 兲
I 1L 共 X 兲 ⫽ K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 d ␰
0 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴 2 其
can be evaluated analytically or numerically. with
冕
Second-Order Approximation. To derive the second-order ap-
L
proximation we differentiate both sides of 共8兲 to obtain 1
I 2L 共 X 兲 ⫽ K 共兩 X⫺ ␰ 兩兲共 ␰ ⫺X 兲 2 d ␰ .
2 0
␤ ⬙ 共 X 兲 ⬇ f ⬙ 共 X 兲 ⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲关 K ⬘ 共 X 兲 ⫹K ⬘ 共 L⫺X 兲兴 ␤ 共 X 兲
Higher-order approximations may be derived similarly, but
⫹ 共 1⫺ ⑀ 兲关 K 共 X 兲 ⫺K 共 L⫺X 兲兴 ␤ ⬘ 共 X 兲 . (10) their expressions are very complicated and not given here.
This, together with 共8兲 and 共7兲 with n⫽2, gives the second-order Illustrative Calculations. The zeroth, first, and second-order
approximation ␤ 2 (X) to ␤ (X): approximations were compared with the accurate numerical solu-
tions for ⑀⫽0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9 and L⫽0.1, 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 20, 30,
60 in the case when ␪ 1 ⫽1 and the wall-temperature distribution is
R共 X 兲
␤ 2共 X 兲 ⫽ (11) linear:
A共 X 兲
where ␪ 共 X 兲 ⫽1⫹6X/L.
Fig. 6 Comparison of approximation and numerical solution for dimension-
However, only some of these 共e.g., in the case when ⑀ ⫽0.1, 0.5 in Fig. 6. Also, all the zeroth, first, and second-order approxima-
and L⫽0.1, 1, 5, 30兲 are shown here because of the length limits. tions are very accurate overall for L⫽0.1 共Fig. 7兲 and slightly less
All computations were carried out using Maple V Release 4 on accurate for L⫽0.5. However, for 0.5⬍L⬍20 all the approxima-
an IBM Pentium Personal Computer, and it took only several tions give highly inaccurate results for ⑀⫽0.1.
minutes to get all the computed results.
It is seen from the computed results that for large values of ⑀
共e.g., ⑀ ⭓0.5兲 the second-order approximations are in good agree- Conclusions
ment with the numerical solutions for all values of L 共see, e.g., This paper presents a simple yet effective method based on the
Fig. 2–5兲, and in particular, all the zeroth, first, and second-order Taylor series expansion to solve a class of radiative heat transfer
approximations are in an excellent agreement in the case when problems between greay surfaces represented here by a class of
⑀ ⫽0.9 for all L. When ⑀ ⫽0.3 共not shown兲, the second-order ap- second kind Fredholm integral equations. The approach leads to
proximations are in reasonable overall agreement with the numeri- an approximate solution of the problem which can be expressed
cal solutions for all L except for L⫽1 in which case the approxi- explicitly in a simple, closed form 共Eqs. 共5兲–共11兲兲 and which can
mation is slightly less accurate near the end at X⫽0 of the be effectively computed on any modern Personal Computer using
cylinder. For large L 共e.g., L⭓10兲 all the zeroth, first, and second- symbolic computing codes such as Maple. So the approach can be
order approximations give excellent approximation except near easily applied to deal with enclosures involving more than one or
the peak in the radiosity close to the end at X⫽L of the cylinder two surfaces, e.g., radiative exchange in a catalytic monolith with
and, with L getting larger, the accuracy of the approximations is square or circular channels where a system of radiative integral
increasing for all X, while, for small L 共e.g., L⭐0.5兲 all the zeroth, equations was used to model the radiative exchange 共see, e.g.,
first, and second-order approximations are good approximation 关7兴兲.
and, with L getting smaller, they are getting more accurate for all To illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method in the
X. In the case when ⑀ ⫽0.1, all the zeroth, first, and second-order present paper we presented a detailed study for an example of
approximations are in an excellent agreement with the numerical radiant heat transfer problems represented here by the integral Eq.
solutions for large L(L⭓20) except near the peak in the radiosity 共1兲. For large values of ⑀ 共e.g., ⑀ ⭓0.5兲 the second-order approxi-
close to the end at X⫽L of the cylinder where the approximations mations give good approximation for all values of L, the ratio of
are not very accurate even for very large L 共e.g., L⫽60兲, as shown the length of the cylinder to its diameter. When ⑀ ⫽0.3, the
less radiosity on inside surface of a cylinder with ␧ Ä0.1 and L Ä0.1
second-order approximations are still of sufficient accuracy over- 关3兴 Atkinson, K. E., 1997, The Numerical Solution of Integral Equations of the
all for all L. For small ⑀ ( ⑀ ⬍0.3) the second-order approxima- Second Kind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
关4兴 Krishnan, K. S., and Sundaram, R., 1960, ‘‘The Distribution of Temperature
tions are accurate overall for small L 共e.g., L⬍0.5, and the accu- Along Electrically Heated Tubes and Coils, I. Theoretical,’’ Proc. R. Soc.
racy is increasing with L getting smaller兲 and for large L 共e.g., London, Ser. A, 257, pp. 302–315.
L⭓20兲 except near the peak in the radiosity close to the end at 关5兴 Perlmutter, M., and Siegel, R., 1963, ‘‘Effect of Specularly Reflecting Gray
X⫽L of the cylinder where the approximations are not very ac- Surface on Thermal Radiation Through a Tube and From Its Heated Wall,’’
curate even for very large L 共e.g., L⫽60兲. However, for 0.5⬍L ASME J. Heat Transfer, 85, No. 1, pp. 55–62.
⬍20 all the approximations give highly inaccurate results in the 关6兴 Choi, B. C., and Churchill, S. W., 1985, ‘‘A Technique for Obtaining Approxi-
case of small ⑀ ( ⑀ ⬍0.3). mate Solutions for a Class of Integral Equations Arising in Radiative Heat
Transfer,’’ Int. J. Heat Fluid Flow, 6, No. 1, pp. 42–48.
关7兴 Worth, D. J., Spence, A., Crumpton, P. I., and Kolaczkowski, S. T., 1996,
References ‘‘Radiative Exchange Between Square Parallel Channels in a Concentric
关1兴 Siegel, R., and Howell, J. R., 1992, Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer, 3rd Ed., Monolith Structure,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 39, No. 7, pp. 1463–1474.
Hemisphere, Washington, DC. 关8兴 Press, W. H., Teukolsky, S. A., Vetterling, W. T., and Flannery, B. P., 1994,
关2兴 Sparrow, E. I., and Cess, R. D., 1970, Radiation Heat Transfer Rev. Ed., Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN, 2nd Ed., Cambridge University Press, Cam-
Wadsworth, Belmont, CA. bridge, UK.
An Analytical Model to Predict rectangular channels and validate the model against the experi-
mental data obtained by authors 关4,5兴 for condensation of R-410A
Condensation of R-410A in in rectangular channels.
a Horizontal Rectangular Channel
Analytical Model
Based on the experimental results discussed by Guo 关5兴 and
Z. Guo1 Guo and Anand 关4兴, the condensing flow in a rectangular channel
Graduate Research Assistant in the current study was in stratified wavy flow regime 共Fig. 1共a兲兲.
The flow of liquid phase within such a flow regime tends to be
N. K. Anand2 activated by both the vapor shear force in the direction of the main
Professor flow and the gravitational force. This is particularly the case when
the longer edges of the rectangular channel are in the vertical
direction. The physical mechanism on the vertical walls of the
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M channel is that the gravitational force that tends to pull the con-
University, College Station, TX 77843-3123 densate down the channel wall is much stronger than the vapor
shear force that tends to pull the condensate in the direction of the
main flow. Thus, a condensate film forms on the inner top wall of
An analytical model to predict condensation heat transfer coeffi- the channel and grows in thickness as it flows down along the side
cient in a horizontal rectangular channel was developed. The total walls. The bottom portion of the tube is filled with a liquid pool
local condensation heat transfer coefficient was represented as that transports the condensed liquid through the channel in the
the weighted average of heat transfer coefficients for each wall. direction of the main flow.
The analytical predictions compared well with the experimental The heat transfer mechanism in stratified wavy flow regime is
data on the condensation of R-410A in a rectangular channel. The considered to be dominated by the conduction across the film at
mean deviation was 6.75 percent. 关S0022-1481共00兲00503-X兴 the top and side walls of the channel. However, wavy surface
effects on the flow along the bottom wall are not considered in
this model. In the current model, separate analyses are conducted
Keywords: Channel Flow, Condensation, Heat Transfer, Phase to calculate the heat transfer through the top, the vertical, and the
Change bottom walls as shown in Fig. 1共b兲. For the heat transfer through
the condensate layer of the top wall of the channel, the von Kar-
man analogy between heat transfer and momentum transfer is
Introduction used. For the heat transfer through the vertical walls, the mecha-
nism is very similar to that in external falling film condensation.
There are numerous investigations on condensation of refriger- The external film condensation on a vertical plate 共as shown in
ants inside circular tubes. A summary of these investigations is Fig. 1共c兲兲 was first studied by Nusselt 关6兴. For this reason, heat
presented in Table 1. However, a limited number of investigators transfer analyses for gravity-driven internal film condensation rely
have studied condensation and two-phase flow in rectangular heavily on the extensive theoretical development for external con-
channels. Troniewski and Ulbrich 关1兴 and Wambsganss et al. 关2,3兴 densation. The heat transfer through the bottom wall of the rect-
studied two-phase air-water flow in vertical and/or horizontal rectangular channel will be calculated by finding the depth of the
angular channels. They developed their own flow regime maps liquid pool flowing through the channel. The total local heat trans-
and proposed methods for calculating pressure drop in such two- fer is calculated by weighted averaging of the heat transfer coef-
phase mixture flows. Guo and Anand 关4兴 measured regionally ficients for the top, the vertical, and the bottom walls of the chan-
averaged heat transfer coefficients for condensation of R-410A in nel at each cross section.
a rectangular 共0.5 in.⫻1.0 in.兲 horizontal channel. The longer side
of the channel cross section was parallel to the gravitational vec- h topA top⫹h verticalA vertical⫹h bottomA bottom
tor. Their experiments were conducted over a mass flux range of h̄⫽ (1)
A top⫹A vertical⫹A bottom
30–2200 kg/s.m2, refrigerant saturation temperature range of 7.8–
36.7°C, and saturation pressure range of 1.02–2.23 MPa. The In Eq. 共1兲, A is the inner surface area of unit length of the
model presented in this work is a combination of numerical and rectangular channel. A top , A vertical , and A bottom are the surface ar-
analytical procedures. R-410A is an azeotropic mixture of eas of the top, the side, and the bottom of the channel, respec-
HFC-32 and HFC-125 each 50 percent by weight. R-410A con- tively. The analytical model developed in this paper is validated
denses and boils with a temperature glide of less than 0.5°C, thus by the experimental data obtained by Guo and Anand 关4兴 and Guo
behaves as a single component refrigerant. The database for con- 关5兴. The current model differs significantly from the ones reported
densation heat transfer and models to predict condensation heat in the literature for condensation in horizontal circular tubes
transfer coefficient in rectangular channels is crucial to the design 共Table 1兲 and the differences are detailed in Guo 关5兴.
of plate-fin heat exchangers. Small rectangular channels are rep- Heat Transfer Through the Top Wall. To predict heat
resentative of plain-fin geometries in plate-fin heat exchangers. transfer coefficient across the top wall (h top) of the channel, the
Plate-fin heat exchangers have certain unique characteristics such von Karman analogy between heat transfer and momentum trans-
as large ratio of heat transfer surface to volume and ability to fer was used. The details can be found elsewhere 共关5兴兲. Here a
achieve true counterflow conditions. They also promote good brief summary is presented. Variation of temperature and velocity
mixing. These plate-fin heat exchangers are considered for appli- in the y-direction was neglected. Accordingly, the variation of
cation in vapor-compression cycles. The azeotropic mixture heat transfer coefficient with y-direction was also neglected. Be-
R-410A is considered as a chlorine-free replacement for HCFC- cause the film is thin compared to the downstream length, the
22. The main objective of this study is to develop an analytical usual boundary layer approximations have been adopted. The
model to predict local condensation heat transfer coefficient in pressure gradient term in the momentum equation was neglected
1
as it is very small compared to viscous and turbulent shear stress
Presently with Polyscience, Niles, IL. terms. The energy equation was integrated across the condensate
2
film with von Karman’s Universal Velocity Profile. The integra-
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Nov. 14, tion was performed over the laminar sublayer and buffer layer.
1998; revision received, Feb. 21, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: P. Ayyaswamy. The shear in the buffer layer was assumed to be approximately
Table 1 Correlations and analytical models for stratified flow in horizontal channels
Investigators Model equations Comments

Nusselt 关6兴
Nu共 x 兲 ⫽0.943 冋 ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 gh l v x
k l ␮ l ⌬T 册
3 1/4 • external condensation on a vertical wall
• analytical
Chato 关10兴
Nu⫽0.555 冋 ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 gh l v D 3h
k l ␮ l ⌬T
册 1/4 • internal condensation—circular tube
• analytical
• Heat transfer through top only
Jaster and Kosky 关11兴
Nu⫽0.728␣ 3/4 冋 ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 gh l v D 3h
k l ␮ l ⌬T
• experimental correlation
• heat transfer through top only
Rosson and Myers 关9兴
Nutop⫽0.31 Re0.12
v 冋 ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 gh l v D 3h
k l ␮ l ⌬T
• experimental correlation for Nutop
␾ l,lt 冑8 Rel • von Karman analogy for Nubottom
冋册
Nubottom⫽ • laminar flow assumed at the bottom
ln共1⫹5 Prl 兲
5 1⫹
Prl
Dobson 关8兴
Nutop⫽
0.23 Re0.12
v
1⫹1.11X0.58
tt
冋 ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 gh l v D 3h
k l ␮ l ⌬T
• experimental correlation for Nutop
Nubottom—Traviss 关12兴 experimental correlation for annular • Nubottom—for both laminar and turbulent flow
flow
Guo 关5兴 Nutop—von Karman analogy • internal condensation—rectangular channel
Nuvertical—Nusselt’s approach • all analytical
Nubottom—liquid pool depth accumulated from top and • Nubottom—for both laminar and turbulent flow
vertical walls
Fig. 1 Model. „a… Idealized schematic of the stratified wavy flow during condensation. „b… A model for
calculating heat transfer through the top, the vertical, and the bottom walls. „c… Schematic of the external
condensation on a vertical wall modeled by Nusselt †6‡.
equal to the shear at the wall ( ␶ / ␶ w ⫽1.0), and the ratio of the u-velocity profile of the falling film should be the same as the one
eddy diffusivity of heat to that of momentum was assumed to be obtained by Nusselt. A schematic of the physical situation mod-
unity (Prt ⫽␧ M /␧ H ⫽1.0). Based on this simplifying assumption eled by Nusselt is shown in Fig. 1共c兲, which is assumed to be at a
an expression for ⌬T is obtained as location with fixed z as shown in Fig. 2共a兲. Starting with the
冑冋册
governing two-dimensional boundary layer equations:
5 Prl q ␶w 1 Continuity equation
⌬T⫽ ⫻ 1⫹ ln共 5 Prl ⫹1 兲 . (2)
c pl ␶ w A ␳l Prl
⳵u ⳵v
The heat transfer coefficient h top is defined so that ⫹ ⫽0. (7)
⳵x ⳵y
q Momentum equation in x-direction
⫽h top⌬T. (3)
A
⳵u ⳵u ⳵ 2u 共 ␳ l⫺ ␳ v 兲g
Then u ⫹v ⫽␯l 2 ⫹ . (8)
⳵x ⳵y ⳵y ␳l
h top⫽
␳ l c pl
Prl
冑冒冋
␶w
␳l
5⫹
5
Prl
ln共 5 Prl ⫹1 兲册 (4)
Compared to the interfacial shear and the pressure gradient in the
main flow direction, the pressure term in the x-direction 共direction
parallel to the vertical walls兲 is negligible. Knowing that the
or in terms of the Nusselt number h topD h /k crossstream 共y兲 component of velocity, v ⫽0 everywhere, further
冑冒冋册
simplification results in the conservation equation ⳵ u/ ⳵ x⫽0 be-
␳ lD h ␶w 5
Nutop⫽ 5⫹ ln共 5 Prl ⫹1 兲 . (5) cause of v ⫽0. The momentum equation reduces to
␮l ␳l Prl
⳵ 2u
A correlation to predict local shear stress in horizontal two- 0⫽ 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 g⫹ ␮ l (9)
phase flow is not available. It may be reasonable to assume the ⳵y2
local shear to be not drastically different from the average shear. with boundary conditions
This assumption does, in fact, lead to fairly good correlation of
data with the Lockhart and Martinelli method 关7兴 used to evaluate u 共 y⫽0 兲 ⫽0 (10a)
the shear stress at the wall. Accordingly, the expression for Nutop and
can be expressed in terms superficial friction factor ( f ls ) and liq-
uid Reynolds number (Rel) as ⳵u
共 y⫽ ␦ 兲 ⫽0. (10b)
␾ l Rel 冑 f ls /2 ⳵y
Nutop⫽ . (6) Subject to the boundary layer assumptions, the y-momentum
5
5⫹ ln共 5 Prl ⫹1 兲 equation reduces to ⳵ P/ ⳵ y⫽0. Thus the formulation for
Prl
y-momentum is quasi two-dimensional.
The details for obtaining ␾ l and f ls can be found in Guo 关5兴.
Heat Transfer Through the Vertical Walls. To calculate
the heat transfer through the vertical walls of the rectangular chan-
nel, the method of external film condensation on a vertical plate
by Nusselt 关6兴 will be adopted. There is at least one problem with
applying Nusselt’s approach to the internal condensation that has
not been formally addressed. Nusselt’s theory assumes that the
condensate flow is entirely driven by the gravity in the downward
direction. In an internal flow, however, a finite shear stress always
exists in the mean flow direction. This is indicated schematically
in Fig. 2共a兲. This shear stress will curve the streamlines of the
condensate, so that they are not straight down as assumed. Thus,
the Nusselt type solutions appear to be strictly applicable only for
zero shear cases, or cases of stagnant vapor. The finite vapor
velocity is in fact what ultimately creates the transition from
stratified flow to annular flow.
The physical model in Fig. 2共a兲 illustrates the effect of a vapor
flow 共or a finite shear stress兲 on external condensation on a verti-
cal surface. It is assumed throughout this analysis that the inertial
forces are negligible in comparison with the viscosity, gravity,
and pressure forces, and that the convective heat transfer is neg-
ligible in comparison to the conduction across the film. These are
the classical Nusselt assumptions 共关6兴兲; hence much of the analy-
sis follows his original integral analysis. Based on the literature
review, these assumptions should be applicable to the present
study where the Prandtl numbers are greater than unity and the
Jakob numbers are much less than unity.
Starting with the Nusselt’s pioneering analysis, we can derive
our new equations with horizontal vapor friction imposed on the
falling film. In the current study, the vapor flowing in the main
direction of the channel did impose a strong drag force on the
falling liquid film. However, this drag force imposed by the vapor
in the z-direction should not affect the u-velocity profile of the Fig. 2 Condensation along the vertical wall. „a… Schematic for
liquid film in the y-direction due to the gravity. For this reason, at condensation of a flowing vapor on a vertical wall. „b… A control
any fixed cross section in the z-direction 共streamwise兲, the volume and discretization grid on the vertical wall.
Integrating this equation twice and applying the boundary con- element, Green’s theorem can be used to express each of the
ditions, we obtain the following relation for the u-velocity profile bracketed terms in Eq. 共20兲 as integrals. This, combined with the
of the liquid film at any fixed location in the z-direction as shown chain rule, results in the following equation:
冕冕冋册
in Fig. 2共a兲:
dṁ g ⳵ ␦ dṁ s ⳵ ␦
冉冊
x2 z2
共 ␳ l⫺ ␳ v 兲g y2 ṁ c ⫽ ⫹ dzdx. (21)
u⫽ y␦⫺ . (11) x1 z1 d␦ ⳵x d␦ ⳵z
␮l 2
Neglecting energy advection, a first law statement on an arbitrary
A small element with unit width is shown on Fig. 2共b兲. The mass element of the liquid film gives
flow rate per unit width in the z-direction due to this gravitational
component of the flow is designated as ṁ g : Q̇⫽ṁ c h l v . (22)
ṁ g ⫽ ␳ l 冕 0
␦
udy⫽
␳ l共 ␳ l⫺ ␳ v 兲 g ␦
3␮l
3
. (12) Based on the assumption that the convective heat transfer is neg-
ligible in comparison to the conduction across the liquid film, the
classical Nusselt approach leads to a linear temperature profile,
The derivative of the gravity driven mass flow rate with respect to which results in the heat transfer coefficient being given by
␦ is then given by
kl
dṁ g ␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 g ␦ 2 h⫽ . (23)
⫽ . (13) ␦
d␦ ␮l
The heat transfer rate can be expressed in terms of the heat trans-
Now let us consider the effect of vapor-liquid interfacial fric- fer coefficient as
tion ( ␶ i ) in the z-direction. Neglecting inertial terms and the pres-
sure gradient 共which is appropriate for the external case兲 in the
z-momentum equation results in Q̇⫽ 冕冕x2
x1
z2
z1
h 共 x,z 兲 ⌬Tdzdx. (24)
⳵ w
2
0⫽ ␮ l , (14) Combining Eqs. 共21兲–共24兲, and realizing that the area of integra-
⳵y2 tion is arbitrary, on rearranging, the following partial differential
subject to equation for ␦ arises:
w 共 y⫽0 兲 ⫽0 (15a) dṁ g ⳵ ␦ dṁ s ⳵ ␦ k l ⌬T

⫹ ⫽ . (25)
d␦ ⳵x d␦ ⳵z h lv␦
⳵w ␶i
共 y⫽ ␦ 兲 ⫽ . (15b) Substituting for the derivatives from Eq. 共13兲 and Eq. 共18兲 into
⳵y ␮l
Eq. 共25兲 gives
Integrating Eq. 共14兲 twice and applying boundary conditions gives
a linear relationship for the w-velocity component
␶i
g共 ␳ l⫺ ␳ v 兲␦ 2 ⳵ ␦
␯l ⳵x
⫹
␯l ⳵z
⫽冉冊
␶ i ␦ ⳵ ␦ k l ⌬T
h lv␦
. (26)
w⫽ y. (16) Equation 共26兲 is a quasi-linear, first-order hyperbolic partial dif-

␮l
ferential equation. Only initial conditions are needed to solve this
The w-velocity profile can also be integrated across the film to hyperbolic equation:
determine the shear driven mass flow rate per unit width in the
x-direction. The result is x⫽0, ␦ 共 0,z 兲 ⫽ ␦ top共 z 兲 ; (27)
ṁ s ⫽ ␳ l 冕 ␦
0
wdy⫽
␶ i␦
2␯l
2
. (17)
z⫽0, ␦ 共 x,0兲 ⫽0.
In Eq. 共27兲, ␦ top(z) is the local condensate film thickness from the
(28)
The derivative of the shear driven mass flow rate is then given by top wall of the channel, which can be estimated by
dṁ s ␶ i ␦ kl Dh
⫽ . (18) ␦ top⫽ ⫽ . (29)
d␦ ␯l h top Nutop
Conservation of mass over an element of thickness ␦ from x 1 to Once the solution to Eq. 共26兲 is found, the heat transfer coefficient
x 2 and z 1 to z 2 共shown in Fig. 2共b兲兲 requires that the net flow into can be determined as a function of both x and z using Eq. 共23兲.
the element due to gravity, shear, and condensate formation be The average local heat transfer coefficient at any cross section is
zero: then determined by
ṁ g 共 x 1 兲 ⫺ṁ g 共 x 2 兲 ⫹ṁ s 共 z 1 兲 ⫺ṁ s 共 z 2 兲 ⫹ṁ c ⫽0. (19) kl
冕
h vertical共 z 兲 ⫽ B
. (30)
Solving Eq. 共19兲 for the condensed mass flow rate, expressing the 1
␦ 共 x,z 兲 dx
other terms in integral form, and grouping the integrals in the x B 0
and z-directions, gives
冕 z2
In Eq. 共30兲, B is the height of the rectangular cross section.
ṁ c ⫽ 关 ṁ g 共 ␦ 共 x 2 ,z 兲兲 ⫺ṁ g 共 ␦ 共 x 1 ,z 兲兲兴 dz The closed-form solution for Eq. 共26兲 is complicated, the nu-
z1 merical method was chosen to directly solve this equation. The
partial differential Eq. 共26兲 can be simply discretized by using
⫹ 冕 x2
x1
关 ṁ s 共 ␦ 共 x,z 2 兲兲 ⫺ṁ s 共 ␦ 共 x,z 1 兲兲兴 dx. (20)
finite difference method with first order accuracy. The final accu-
racy of the numerical solution will mainly depend on the grid size
used and the convergence criteria implemented.
If the derivatives of the gravity and shear driven mass flow rates, Following the discretization index as shown in Fig. 2共b兲, Eq.
given by Eq. 共13兲 and Eq. 共18兲, exist and are integrable over the 共26兲 can be discretized as
Fig. 3 Liquid refrigerant film thickness on the vertical wall due to condensation. „a…
G Ä143.8 kgÕs m2 . „b… G Ä178.1 kgÕs m2 .
␮l 冉
␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 g 共 ␦ i,k 兲 2 ␦ i,k ⫺ ␦ i⫺1,k
⌬x
⫹
␮l冊 ⌬z 冉
␳ l ␶ i ␦ i,k ␦ i,k ⫺ ␦ i,k⫺1
冊 Max 冏 ␦ N⫹1
冏
i,k ⫺ ␦ i,k
␦ Ni,k
N
⭐10⫺3 (36)
k l ⌬T where N and N⫹1 are iteration levels.

⫽ . (31)
h l v ␦ i,k Figure 3 shows the calculated local film thickness on the verti-
cal wall for two different mass flow rates. In these two plots, the
By defining three coefficients vertical axis represents the location along the channel vertical wall
from top to the bottom 共dimensionless value from 0 to 1兲. The
␳ l 共 ␳ l ⫺ ␳ v 兲 g 共 ␦ i,k 兲 2 ␳ l ␶ i ␦ i,k k l ⌬T horizontal axis represents the film thickness normalized with re-
A⫽ , B⫽ , and C⫽
␮ l ⌬x ␮ l ⌬z h l v ␦ i,k spect to the hydraulic diameter of the rectangular channel. Each
(32) curve describes a film thickness profile at a z-location along the
main flow direction of the channel with a local quality 共x兲 of the
the liquid film thickness is written in the form of two-phase flow. The curve with the highest local quality is the
film thickness profile at the entrance region of the channel, and the
A ␦ i⫺1,k ⫹B ␦ i,k⫺1 ⫹C curve with the lowest local quality describes the profile at the exit
␦ i,k ⫽ . (33) region of the channel.
A⫹B
The calculated film thickness curves on the vertical wall of the
The initial conditions are rectangular channel illustrate the condensation characteristics as
expected. As the refrigerant condenses, the liquid layer grows as it
␦ 1,k ⫽ ␦ top,k and ␦ i,1 ⫽0. (34) flows downward from the top to the bottom on the vertical wall.
The liquid film thickness at the top (x/B⬃0) is the one calculated
The Gauss-Seidel method was used to iteratively solve the equa- from the analytical model for the top wall of the channel. The
tion. The variable ␦ i,k appearing in the three coefficients 共i.e., liquid film from the top wall is combined with the condensate
nonlinearity兲 is the result from the previous iteration. To obtain formed along the vertical walls from top to the bottom, then it is
grid-independent solution, the average of film thickness on the carried down to the bottom of the channel to accumulate in the
vertical wall is calculated: liquid pool.
k max i max
Comparing curves for different local qualities 共x兲 reveals that
兺兺
the film thickness increases as the two-phase flow quality de-
共 ␦ i,k dxdz 兲 creases along the main flow direction. This indicates that a larger
k⫽1 i⫽1
¯␦
vertical⫽ (35) amount of liquid refrigerant is accumulated on the vertical wall at
A vertical lower qualities. It also explains that as vapor flow slows down, the
interfacial shear acting on the liquid layer by the vapor flow de-
Increase of i max and k max results in a change of ¯␦ vertical . The creases as the quality decreases.
criterion for grid independence is that the relative change of Comparison of Fig. 3共a兲 and Fig. 3共b兲 reveals that as the refrig-
¯␦ erant mass flux increases, the film thickness decreases. Smaller
vertical between two consecutive grid sizes is less than three per-
cent. For most of the cases the grid size of i max⫽14 and k max amount of liquid refrigerant is adhered on the vertical walls as the
⫽11 satisfied this criterion. Convergence criteria for the solution mass flux increases due to the higher vapor and liquid velocity in
was set such that the main flow direction. These two figures also shows a common
characteristic which is that the thickness of the first liquid film depth of the refrigerant liquid pool increases as the liquid film
curve with the highest local quality 共x兲 is significantly less than thickness increases on the top and vertical walls along the stream-
the thickness of other curves that are at further downstream loca- wise distance z 共mean flow direction兲. The increase of condensate
tions of the channel and with lower local qualities. This phenom- along z due to the heat transfer through the bottom wall is ne-
enon is particularly significant in Figure 3共a兲. The film thickness glected. Based on the above assumption, the liquid pool depth
increases at a higher rate in the entrance region, while in the should be equal to the total condensate film thickness from the
further downstream section of the channel the film thickness ends of both vertical walls.
growth rate is much smaller. At the channel entrance, there is no
or little liquid film attached to the channel walls. The heat transfer ␦ bottom⫽2 ␦ i max,k (37)
coefficient at the entrance is high. As the liquid film grows along
the channel in the main flow direction z, the liquid film acts as a
barrier against the heat transfer between the condensing refriger- It is known that ␦ bottom is the depth of the liquid refrigerant flow-
ant and the cold wall. After a certain length, the growth of the ing on the bottom of the channel, and ␦ i max,k is the film thickness
liquid film slows down and finally approaches a stage where there at the end of the vertical walls of the channel. The only heat
is no more increase in liquid layer due to the heat transfer across transfer through the bottom of the channel is due to the tempera-
the vertical wall. Dobson 关8兴 drew the same conclusion by ana- ture gradient across the liquid pool.
lyzing the characteristic solution of Eq. 共26兲. In his discussion,
Dobson implied that the film thickness ␦ grows within a certain 共 T sat⫺T wall兲
range in the direction of z. After liquid film is fully developed, the q ⬙ ⫽k ⫽h bottom共 T sat⫺T wall兲 (38)
␦bottom
thickness would be unaffected by the interfacial shear ␶ i in the
direction of z at any fixed value on x-axis.
From Eq. 共38兲, the local heat transfer coefficient for the bottom of
Heat Transfer Through the Bottom Wall. As the liquid re- the channel along any location z is calculated from
frigerant accumulates to the bottom of the channel due to gravi-
tational action, the heat transfer across the bottom wall of the
kl
rectangular channel would be lower compared to the heat transfer h bottom共 z 兲 ⫽ (39)
across the top and vertical walls of the channel. Still this portion ␦ bottom共 z 兲
of heat transfer can be considered as the heat transfer across the
refrigerant liquid pool depth accumulated on the bottom of the
channel. It is assumed that the liquid refrigerant accumulated in Results and Discussion
the bottom portion of the rectangular channel is mainly due to the In this section, the results from the analytical model described
condensation from the top and the vertical walls. Accordingly, the in the previous sections are compared with the experimental re-
Fig. 4 Comparison of the analytically predicted local Nusselt number with the
current experimental data for the rectangular channel and the correlations of oth-
ers for circular tubes. „a… G Ä73.9 kgÕs m2 . „b… G Ä114.2 kgÕs m2 . „c… G
Ä143.8 kgÕs m2 . „d… G Ä178.1 kgÕs m2 .
predicted and experimental values is 6.75 percent, and the maxi-
mum deviation between these two is 34.3 percent, which is con-
siderably better than the correlations from the literature.
Summary
An analytical model to predict local condensation heat transfer
coefficient in a horizontal rectangular channel was developed. The
local heat transfer coefficient for the top, the vertical, and the
bottom walls were determined separately. The total local conden-
sation heat transfer coefficient was represented as the weighted
average of the heat transfer coefficients for each wall. The von
Karman analogy was used to determine the condensation heat
transfer coefficient along the top wall. The classic Nusselt analy-
ses for condensation on a vertical wall was modified to obtain a
first-order partial differential equation for the liquid film thickness
along the inside of the vertical wall. The resulting partial differ-
ential equation was solved using a finite difference technique. The
liquid film thickness, along the bottom wall, was determined by
the mass balance of the liquid condensate, from the top and ver-
tical walls, and the heat transfer coefficient was determined by the
energy balance. The analytical predictions compared well with the
Fig. 5 Comparison of the experimental data of Guo †5‡ with experimental data on the condensation of R-410A in a rectangular
the current analytical predictions channel obtained by Guo 关5兴. The mean deviation was 6.75 per-
cent.
Acknowledgment
sults of Guo 关5兴. Also compared are the results from correlation This work was performed under the auspices of a research con-
equations developed by other investigators. tract 共W08511-07兲 from the Electric Power Research Institute
Among the correlations presented in Table 1, only the correla- 共EPRI兲. The authors are grateful to the EPRI for their financial
tions by Rosson and Myers 关9兴 and by Dobson 关8兴 are used for support of the project. The authors wish to thank the Project Man-
comparison with the current results. The reason for this choice is ager, Mr. Andrew Saleh, for his technical input.
discussed in Guo 关5兴.
Figure 4 shows the graphs of both experimentally 共关5兴兲 and
analytically obtained local heat transfer coefficient as a function
of the quality. The four sets of test runs for different mass fluxes Nomenclature
were chosen to represent the entire range of the experimental con- A ⫽ area, m2
ditions investigated 共关5兴兲. As can be seen from the graphs in Fig. B ⫽ height of cross section of rectangular channel test
4共a兲, at a mass flow rate of 73.9 kg/s m2, the correlations by tube, m
Rosson and Myers 关9兴 and by Dobson 关8兴 overpredicted the ex- c p ⫽ specific heat, J/kg K
perimental measurements of Guo 关5兴. The reason for the signifi- D h ⫽ hydraulic diameter of rectangular channel, m
cant difference between analytical predictions and experimental f ⫽ friction factor
data at low mass fluxes could be due to the fact that the conden- G ⫽ mass flux of condensing refrigerant, kg/s m2
sation along the bottom wall is neglected in the present analytical g ⫽ acceleration due to gravity, m/s2
model. At low mass fluxes greater amount of refrigerant gets con- h ⫽ heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K
densed along the bottom resulting in greater resistance to heat h l v ⫽ latent heat of refrigerant, J/kg
transfer. While at higher mass flow rates, as shown in Fig. 4, the ṁ ⫽ mass flow rate, kg/s
difference between the experimental data and the predicted values k ⫽ thermal conductivity, W/m K
are getting smaller to an acceptable range 共within ⫾10 percent兲. N ⫽ number of data points
The comparison also indicates that, at low mass flux (G Nu ⫽ Nusselt number, hD/k
⫽73.9 kg/s m2 ), the current analytical model predicts the experi- P ⫽ local pressure, N/m2 共psi兲
mental results better than the correlations of the other investiga- Pr ⫽ Prandtl number of liquid refrigerant, ␮ l c pl /k l
tors. Details of calculation of experimental uncertainty is given Q̇ ⫽ heat flow rate, W
elsewhere 共关5兴兲. Any experimental data with an uncertainty q ⬙ ⫽ heat flux, W/m2
greater than ten percent were discarded by Guo and Anand 关4兴 and Rel ⫽ Reynolds number of liquid refrigerant,
Guo 关5兴. G(1⫺x)D h / ␮ l
The predictions of the current analytical model are compared S ⫽ mean deviation
with the current experimental data in Fig. 5. To compare the T ⫽ temperature, K, 共°C, °F兲
closeness of two sets of data, the definition of the mean deviation u, v ,w ⫽ velocities in the x,y,z-directions, m/s
is introduced: X ⫽ Martinelli parameter
x ⫽ local quality of condensing refrigerant
冑兺冉
x ⫽ coordinate direction along the vertical walls of the
冊
N
1 h analytical,i ⫺h experimental,i 2
rectangular channel
S⫽ . (40)
N i⫽1 h experimental,i y ⫽ coordinate direction along the horizontal wall of the
cross section
z ⫽ coordinate direction of the rectangular channel along
The agreement is very good. The mean deviation between the the flow direction
Greek Symbols Subcooled Flow Boiling in
⬀ ⫽ void fraction
␦ ⫽ film thickness, m
Circumferentially Nonuniform and
␧ ⫽ eddy diffusivity Uniform Heated Vertical
␮ ⫽ dynamic viscosity, kg/m s
␯ ⫽ kinematic viscosity, m2/s
Channels With Downward Flow
␳ ⫽ density of refrigerant, kg/m3
␶ ⫽ local shear stress, N/m2 Q. Peatiwala
␾l ⫽ two-phase pressure drop multiplier
71B Barakat Al-Haidry Memorial Market, Block ‘‘E’’,
⌬ ⫽ difference
North Nazimabad, Karachi 74700, Pakistan
Superscripts e-mail: qpeatiwala@hotmail.com
N ⫽ iteration number
គ ⫽ averaged
Subscripts R. D. Boyd, Sr.
bottom ⫽ bottom wall Fellow ASME, Honeywell Professor of Engineering and
c ⫽ condensation Director of the Thermal Science Research Center
fr ⫽ friction 共TSRC兲, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Prairie
g ⫽ gravity View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446
H ⫽ heat e-mail: ronaldគboyd@pvamu.edu
h ⫽ hydraulic diameter
i ⫽ inlet or index in x-direction or vapor-liquid interface
k ⫽ index in z-direction
l, liq ⫽ liquid refrigerant Results are presented for new experimental data for subcooled
ls ⫽ liquid superficial flow boiling heat transfer in circumferentially nonuniform (single-
M ⫽ momentum side) and uniformly heated tubes. Although the Liu-Winterton cor-
s ⫽ shear relation had better agreement at low power levels and axial loca-
sat ⫽ saturation tions, Shah’s correlation had better agreement at higher power
levels and at axial locations near the center of the heated length.
top ⫽ top wall
Both correlations overpredicted the data near the exit. Therefore,
v ⫽ vapor refrigerant
additional correlational developmental work is needed for local
vertical ⫽ side wall (axial) flow boiling heat transfer in circumferentially nonuniform
w ⫽ wall of the channel heated channels. 关S0022-1481共00兲00603-4兴
t ⫽ turbulent
tt ⫽ turbulent vapor flow and turbulent liquid flow Keywords: Boiling, Forced Convection, Multiphase Flows,
lt ⫽ laminar liquid flow and turbulent liquid flow Nonuniform Heat Flux
Introduction
References Subcooled flow boiling can accommodate high levels of heat
关1兴 Troniewski, L., and Ulbrich, R., 1984, ‘‘Two-Phase Gas-Liquid Flow in Rect- flux in a variety of diverse processes and applications such as
angular Channels,’’ Chem. Eng. Sci., 39, No. 4, pp. 751–765. advanced space thermal management systems, plasma-facing fu-
关2兴 Wambsganss, M. W., Jendrzejczyk, J. A., France, D. M., and Obot, N. T., sion components, electronic and computer components, and
1990, Two-Phase Flow Patterns and Frictional Pressure Gradients in Small,
Horizontal, Rectangular Channel,’’ Argonne National Laboratory, Research
manufacturing and material processing.
Report ANL-90/19, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL. Subcooled flow boiling heat transfer is a complicated phenom-
关3兴 Wambsganss, M. W., Jendrzejczyk, J. A., France, D. M., and Obot, N. T., enon involving many factors, among which circumferential heat
1990, Two-Phase Flow Patterns and Pressure Gradients in a Small Rectangular flux distribution on the channel wall is an important one. Beside
Channel: A Comparison Between Two Horizontal Orientations,’’ Argonne Na- the heat flux distribution, there are many different variables which
tional Laboratory, Research Report ANL-90/46, University of Illinois, Chi-
cago, IL.
influence the flow boiling heat transfer. These variables include
关4兴 Guo, Z., and Anand, N. K., 1999, ‘‘Condensation of R-410A in a Rectangular pressure, mass flow rate, quality, thermophysical properties, wall
Channel,’’ Int. J. HVAC&R Res., 5, pp. 99–123. material, surface characteristics, and channel geometry. A clear
关5兴 Guo, Z., 1998, ‘‘Condensation of R-410A in Horizontal Rectangular Chan- understanding of the influence of different variables on heat trans-
nel,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. fer during single-phase flow may be obtained through analytical
关6兴 Nusselt, W., 1916, ‘‘Die Oberflachenkondensation des Wasserdampfes,’’ Z.
Vereins Deutsch. Ing., 60, pp. 541–557.
equations and well established empirical correlations; but, flow
关7兴 Lockhart, R. W., and Martinelli, R. C., 1949, ‘‘Proposed Correlation of Data boiling heat transfer with a circumferential nonuniform external
for Isothermal Two-Phase, Two-Component Flow in Pipes,’’ Chem. Eng. heat flux distribution is more complex due to interactions between
Prog., 45, No. 5, pp. 39–48. the two phases, fluid interaction with the channel wall in the pres-
关8兴 Dobson, M. K., 1994, ‘‘Heat Transfer and Flow Regimes During Condensa- ence of both convective and boiling modes of heat transfer, and
tion in Horizontal Tubes,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Champaign, IL.
the complex geometric boundary influences. However, by intro-
关9兴 Rosson, H. F., and Myers, J. A., 1965, ‘‘Point Values of Condensing Film ducing reasonable physical abstraction, it is sometimes possible to
Coefficients Inside a Horizontal Pipe,’’ Chem. Eng. Prog., Symp. Ser., 61, No. greatly simplify the problem and obtain useful results.
59, pp. 190–199. In the past, one of the first simplifying assumptions made to
关10兴 Chato, J. C., 1962, ‘‘Laminar Condensation Inside Horizontal and Inclined advance the two-phase flow boiling theory was to study heat
Tubes,’’ ASHRAE J., 4, pp. 52–60.
关11兴 Jaster, H., and Kosky, P. G., 1976, ‘‘Condensation in a Mixed Flow Regime,’’
transfer in uniformly heated tubes. This simple geometry was used
关12兴 Traviss, D. P., Rohsenow, W. M., and Baron, A. B., 1973 ‘‘Forced Convection Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF
Condensation in Tubes: A Heat Transfer Correlation for Condenser Design,’’ HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, Mar. 26,
ASHRAE Trans., 79, No. 1, pp. 157–165. 1999; revision received, Mar. 9, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: S. Sadhal.
usually to 共1兲 decrease the experimental complexity, 共2兲 directly minimized by using a pneumatically controlled metering valve.
use previous single-phase data as a basis to isolate the boiling After exiting the control valve, the fluid flows to a heat exchanger,
contribution, and 共3兲 to avoid the inclusion of the complexity of where its temperature is set to a desired value by adjusting the
circumferential heat flux variations on the channel inner wall. constant temperature bath. After exiting the heat exchanger, the
From the literature, it is clear that there has been much work fluid passes through the turbine flow meter and enters the un-
completed for flow boiling heat transfer correlations for a uniform heated ‘‘flow developing’’ section or upstream part of the test
heat flux distribution. Correlations presented by Chen 关1兴, Shah section which has a length greater than 40 times the test section
关2兴, Kandlikar 关3,4兴, Steiner et al. 关5兴, Gunger and Winterton diameter. The fluid then enters the heated section of the test sec-
关6,7兴, and Boyd and Meng 关8兴 cover different fluids, vast ranges of tion. A downstream pneumatically controlled valve is used to con-
flow rates, the entire spectrum of quality, and low and high sub- trol the test section exit pressure. The heated fluid then passes
cooling. Some of these correlations are recommended for both through another heat exchanger where the energy generated in the
saturated and subcooled flow boiling. These correlations are valid test section is removed partially by using tap water. Finally, the
for only smooth tubes, and one must avoid using them when ori- fluid flows back to the reservoir and the flow cycle is completed.
entation is important.
As stated above, several researchers have proposed correlations Test Section Description. The test sections are 2.235-m long
for the prediction of heat transfer coefficients in flow boiling sys- copper tubes 共see Fig. 1共b兲兲, and consist of two parts: 共1兲 an up-
tems. But to simplify the heat transfer modeling and reduce the stream unheated section to facilitate flow development, and 共2兲 a
experimental complexities, most of the research efforts have been downstream single-side heated section. For the present case, the
limited to heat transfer correlation for uniformly heated channels. inside diameter 共D兲 was 25.4 mm and the outside diameter was
In addition, very little effort has been made to study heat transfer 28.5 mm.
in complex and nonuniform heated channels. The 1.22-m long downstream portion of the test section is
In this paper, the results of flow boiling heat transfer in nonuni- heated with heater tapes which vary in width based on tube diam-
form or single-side heated tubes are presented, and the experimen- eter. Each tape has a power generation capacity of 2.66 kW. The
tal heat transfer coefficients are compared with selected existing entire test section is insulated to minimize the heat losses which
single-phase and two-phase flow boiling correlations. In order to are accounted for in the data reduction. In addition to the primary
establish a basis for the comparisons with data for the single-side two parts of the main test section, each part has pressure-
heated channel, base line comparisons for uniformly heated chan- temperature measurement ports upstream and downstream of the
nels are made with data from: 共1兲 the literature, and 共2兲 from the test section.
same flow loop used to produce the single-side heat flux data but The heated part of the test section is divided into seven 0.203 m
with uniformly heated wall conditions. Among the two-phase cor- axial intervals. At each of the axial locations, there are seven
relations considered are heat transfer correlations for uniformly thermocouples installed circumferentially at the angles of 0, ␲/4,
heated tubes developed by Shah 关2兴 and Liu and Winterton 关9兴. 3␲/8, ␲/2, 5␲/8, 3␲/4, and ␲ radians, with 0 corresponding to the
Because they are frequently used by many designers and research- plane of symmetry at the heated side.
ers in a variety of engineering fields, the selected single-phase Data Reduction Analysis. Forty-nine local temperature mea-
correlations are 共1兲 the Dittus-Boelter correlation, and 共2兲 the surements are made on the outside surface of the heated portion of
Petukhov correlation. Using the results from the above compari- the test section for each experiment. These outside temperatures
sons, we will 共1兲 assess these correlations and data for the uniform are related to the inside wall temperature in order to determine the
heat flux case, and 共2兲 adapt the correlations to the single-side heat inside heat transfer coefficient. Figure 2 shows the model used for
flux case. the data reduction. This model was used to compute a circumfer-
entially averaged heat transfer coefficient from the circumferen-
Experimental Summary tially averaged wall temperature. The latter temperature was com-
A series of experiments were run to obtain the axial heat trans- puted from the seven wall temperature measurements made on the
fer coefficient distribution for both the uniform and single-side outside of the test section at each of the seven axial locations.
heated configurations. Results for two experimental test cases are Briefly, this approach involves estimating the inside channel
presented. These cases involve both uniform and single-side wall temperature by using an equivalent uniformly heated tube
heated configurations under identical flow conditions. The results whose diameter is equal to the ratio of four times the flow cross-
are presented for Freon-11 flowing in a 25.4 mm inside diameter sectional area to the heated perimeter. This is done by accounting
共i.d.兲 tube, with a mass velocity 共G兲 of 210.0 kg/m2s, an inlet for the temperature drop across the flow channel wall and the heat
temperature of 22.6°C, and an exit pressure of 0.1843 MPa 共ab- losses 共convection and radiation兲 from the test section to the am-
solute兲. The external heated surface area for the single-side heated bient. An iterative scheme was necessary to compute the inside
case was 0.0512 m2. The outside diameter of the heated channel wall temperature. After accounting for finite heat losses, the cir-
was 28.4 mm. Peatiwala and Boyd 关10兴 presented two- cumferentially averaged heat transfer coefficient is given by
dimensional wall temperature measurements in the circumferen-
tial and axial directions for the above noted flow conditions. In h m ⫽A/B, (1)
addition, comparisons were made with similar data for horizontal where
flow 共关11兴兲. Further results were presented in terms of circumfer-
entially and axially averaged heat transfer coefficients. The
present work extends that study by presenting axial variations of
the heat transfer coefficient and comparing these variations with
A⫽ 冉冊冋冉冊
kA
rA
B 1 ln
rD
rC
⫹
kC
h ⬁r D
kC
册
⫺ 共 T m ⫺T ⬁ 兲 ,
rA
selected correlations. The detailed description of the experimental B⫽B 2 ⫹B 3 ⫹B 4 ,

flow boiling loop 共see Fig. 1共a兲兲, the test sections used, the ex-
perimental procedure, and error analysis are summarized below. B 1 ⫽ P p r C /A s k B ,
Flow Loop. The flow loop is shown in Fig. 1共a兲. The

Freon-11 flows from the reservoir to the filter, where the contami-
nant is removed before the fluid enters the positive displacement
冋冉冊
B 2 ⫽ 共 T m ⫺T ⬁ 兲 ln
rD
rC
⫹
kC kC
⫹ ln
h ⬁r D k B
rC
rB 冉冊册 ,
pump. The positive displacement pump requires a net positive

suction of at least 0.02 MPa. After leaving the pump, the fluid
passes through the pulsation damper. The damper reduces the
B 3 ⫽ 共 T m ⫺T ⬁ 兲冋冉冊册冋冉冊
kC
kA
ln
rB
rA
⫺ ln
rD
rC
⫹
kC
h ⬁r D 册
共 T f ⫺T ⬁ 兲 ,
pressure and flow oscillations. The pressure fluctuations are also and
Fig. 1 „a… Schematic of the vertical downward flow boiling loop. „b… Wall tempera-
ture measurement locations: „i… cross section locations, „ii… axial locations along
heated length.
冋冉冊
B 4 ⫽B 1 ln
rC
rB
kB
⫹ ln
kA
rB
rA 冉冊册 .
tive heat losses to the surroundings. Using this model, the mean
heat transfer coefficient (h m ) at a given axial location was ob-
tained.
In Eq. 共1兲, T f is the bulk fluid temperature and A s is the outside Uncertainty Analysis. This study has resulted in the determi-
surface area of the copper tube 共domain A兲. At each axial loca- nation of circumferentially mean heat transfer coefficients from
tion, the circumferentially averaged heat transfer coefficient was measurements of 共1兲 the test section outside local wall tempera-
computed from the circumferentially averaged wall temperature ture; 共2兲 the flow conditions, which include flow rates, exit pres-
(T m ). The circumferentially averaged temperature was computed sure, and inlet and exit bulk temperatures; and 共3兲 the ambient
from the seven wall temperature measurements made on the cop- temperature. The relationships between these quantities were sum-
per tube outside surface at each axial location by using the piece- marized in Eqs. 共1兲 and 共2兲. Following the approach outlined by
wise linear approach used by Reid et al. 关12兴. Using their ap- Moffat 关13,14兴, the uncertainty in the heat transfer coefficient h m
proach, the circumferentially averaged outside wall temperature is
can be related to the seven circumferential measured temperatures
共T m1 at 0 radians, T m2 at ␲/4, T m3 at 3␲/8, etc.兲 by the equation
given below: ␦ h m⫽ 冋冉 ⳵hm
⳵Xi
␦Xi 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵hm
⳵Ci
␦Ci 冊册
2 1/2
, (3)
2T m1 ⫹3T m2 ⫹2T m3 ⫹2T m4 ⫹2T m5 ⫹3T m6 ⫹2T m7 where X i represents all independent variables and C i represents
T m⫽ . (2)
16 corrections used to account for calibration defects, system-sensor
interactions, and system disturbance errors. The double indices in
The temperature T m was used in Eq. 共1兲 to account for the tem- Eq. 共3兲 imply summation over all independent or correction vari-
perature drop across the channel wall, and convective and radia- ables. The uncertainty in h m can be approximated by
Fig. 2 Control volume for the heated hydraulic diameter model
␦ h m⬇ 冋冉 ⳵hm
⳵A
␦A 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵hm
⳵B
␦B 冊册
2 1/2
, (4) ␦ A⫽ 冋冉 ⳵A
⳵Pp
␦Pp 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵A
␦T
⳵Tm m 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵A
␦T
⳵T⬁ ⬁ 冊册
2 1/2
;
where A and B are given in Eq. 共1兲. Since A and B are not actually
independent variables, their relationships with these variables are and
as follows:
␦ B⫽Function共 T ⬁ ,T m ,T f , P p 兲 , (6)
␦ A⫽Function共 T m , P p ,T ⬁ 兲 , (5)
so that so that
Fig. 3 Comparisons of low heat flux, single-phase heat transfer data with predictions. Q
Ä125.0 kWÕm2 ; g Ä500.0 kgÕm2 ; D Ä15.7 mm; and T satÄ120°C „Chen and Tuzla †15‡….
Fig. 4 Comparisons of correlations „ C … with experimental Freon-11 data for single-phase and
two-phase heat transfer coefficients for uniform and single-side heated vertical smooth channels
with downward flow for the following flow conditions: G Ä210.0 kgÕm2s, D Ä25.4 mm; Z Ä Z 4
Ä0.6096 m, with an exit pressure of 0.1843 MPa „absolute…
␦ B⫽ 冋冉 ⳵B
␦P
⳵Pp p 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵B
␦T
⳵Tm m 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵B
␦T
⳵T⬁ ⬁ 冊冉
2
⫹
⳵B
⳵T f
␦T f 冊册
2 1/2
.
⫾0.7 kPa; 共5兲 for mass velocity, 8.4 kg/m2s; and 共6兲 for tempera-
ture, ⫾0.2°C. This resulted in ␦ h m ⬇⫾14.6 W/m2C.
The uncertainties for each measurement in this experiment are Results

as follows: 共1兲 for geometric measurements, ⫾0.1 mm; 共2兲 for Before the single-phase correlations were used for comparisons
voltage, ⫾0.05 mV; 共3兲 for current, ⫾0.005 mA; 共4兲 for pressure, with our experimental data, they were compared with single-phase
Fig. 5 Comparisons of correlations „ C … with experimental Freon-11 data for single-phase and
two-phase heat transfer coefficients for single-side heated vertical smooth channels with down-
ward flow for the following flow conditions: G Ä210.0 kgÕm2s, D Ä25.4 mm; Z Ä Z 2 Ä0.2032 m, with
an exit pressure of 0.1843 MPa „absolute…
Fig. 6 Comparisons of correlations „ C … with experimental Freon-11 data for single-phase and two-
phase heat transfer coefficients for single-side heated vertical smooth channels with downward flow
for the following flow conditions: G Ä210.0 kgÕm2s, D Ä25.4 mm; Z Ä Z 6 Ä1.016 m, with an exit pres-
sure of 0.1843 MPa „absolute…
data produced by Chen and Tuzla 关15兴 and Boyd 关16兴. It is im- Z, all correlations overpredicted the data 共see Fig. 6兲. This over-
portant to note that the Chen and Tuzla water data was produced prediction at larger values of Z may be related to 共1兲 the flow
using a very low heat flux of 125.0 kW/m2. For comparison at passing into a fully developed flow boiling regime, and 共2兲 the
higher heat fluxes, Peatiwala and Boyd 共关17兴, Fig. 3 in that pub- inability of using D t alone to account for the circumferentially
lication兲 show that the Petukhov’s correlation has better success nonuniform heat flux, orientation effects, as well as the three-
than the Dittus-Boelter correlation. However, Fig. 3 in the present dimensional two-phase effects—all of which would become more
work shows that the Dittus-Boelter correlation faired better at significant as Z increases. Very few if any existing correlations
lower heat fluxes. As Boyd and Meng 关8兴 demonstrated, Shah’s can address these effects simultaneously.
correlation has good predictability for high heat flux conditions in
the partial nucleate boiling region when it is used along with Conclusions
Petukhov’s correlation rather than the Dittus-Boelter correlation. When used directly in the single-phase regime, the Liu-
Figure 4 shows the comparison of the present experimental data Winterton correlation compared well with the single-side heated
obtained at an axial location near the middle of the test section Freon-11 data when D t was chosen as the characteristic length.
with the above noted single-phase and two-phase correlations for However, Shah’s correlation characterized the data better in the
both uniform and single-side heated boundary conditions. Since two-phase region. Since all correlations overpredicted the data
none of the correlations selected accounts for orientation, we an- near the exit of the test section for the two-phase region, addi-
ticipate only qualitative comparisons. Before the comparisons are tional correlational development will be needed to completely
discussed, it should be noted that the effects of single-side heating characterize flow boiling heat transfer and nonuniform circumfer-
was accounted for by using a particular correlation as usual with ential heating effects. Finally, good agreement was obtained be-
the exception of using the thermal hydraulic diameter (D t ) as the tween the correlations for uniformly heated channels and water
characteristic length in place of the channel diameter 共D兲. So that data under the following conditions: 共1兲 for low heat fluxes (q
D t is given by 4A c / P H , where P H is the heated perimeter and A c
⭐125 kW/m2 ), the Dittus-Boelter correlation is recommended for
is the flow channel cross-sectional area. With this definition of
D t , one readily observes the effect of the different reference single-phase convection; 共2兲 for high heat fluxes (125 kW/m2 ⬍q
lengths in Fig. 4 for both a uniformly heated channel and the ⭐30,000 kW/m2 ), Petukhov’s correlation is recommended for
single-side heated channel. As shown in the figure, there is quali- single-phase convection; and 共3兲 for high heat fluxes, Shah’s cor-
tative agreement with the data in the single-phase region and good relation is recommended for partial nucleate subcooled flow boil-
agreement with Shah’s correlation in the two-phase region. For ing.
the single-side heated case and at further upstream axial locations,
there is fairly good agreement between all single-phase correla- Acknowledgments
tions and the data for Z between 0.203 and 0.416 m. After the This work was supported under NASA contract #NAG9-631
ONB, Fig. 5 shows that there is better agreement between the data and under DOE contract DE-FG03-97ER54452.
and the Liu-Winterton correlation at upstream locations (Z
⬍0.4 m) and lower power levels. However, for increased values
Nomenclature
of Z between 0.4 m and 0.8 m or at higher levels of power, Fig. 4
and Peatiwala and Boyd 共关17兴, Fig. 5 in that publication兲 show D ⫽ channel inside diameter 共m兲
that Shah’s correlation gave better predictions. At larger values of G ⫽ mass velocity 共kg/m2s兲
h ⫽ heat transfer 共H. T.兲 coefficient 共W/m2C兲 Fusion Zone Shapes in Electron-Beam
h m ⫽ axially distributed but circumferentially averaged
heat transfer coefficient 共W/m2C兲 Welding Dissimilar Metals
h ⬁ ⫽ Heat transfer coefficient due to natural convection
共W/m2C兲
hl ⫽ Single-Phase heat transfer coefficient 共W/m2C兲 P. S. Wei
k ⫽ thermal conductivity 共W/mC兲 Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, National
ONB ⫽ onset of nucleate boiling Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC
P p ⫽ net power generation 共W兲 e-mail: pswei@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
q ⫽ heat flux 共W/m2兲
q c ⫽ heat flux due to natural convection from outside
of test section 共W/m2兲 Y. K. Kuo
q R ⫽ heat flux due to radiation from the outside of the Graduate Student, Mechanical Engineering Department,
test section 共W/m2兲 National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung,
Q/Q 2 ⫽ ratio of the net power to the power required to Taiwan, ROC
cause saturated liquid condition to occur at the
exit
r ⫽ radial coordinate for the data reduction model 共m兲 J. S. Ku
T ⫽ Temperature 共Temp兲共C兲 Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, National
T f ⫽ bulk temperature of the flowing fluid 共K兲 Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC
T mi ( ␾ ,Z) ⫽ local circumferential measured outside wall tem-
perature of the test section 共K兲
T w ( ␾ ,Z) ⫽ outside wall temperature of the test section
Experiments on welding dissimilar metals, such as aluminum or
关 ⫽T mi ( ␾ ,Z) 兴共K兲
copper to iron with an electron-beam welder, are conducted. It is
T ⬁ ⫽ ambient temperature 共K兲
found that the observed depth-to-width ratio of the fusion zone in
Z ⫽ axial coordinate for the heated portion of the test
aluminum can be greater than unity while that in iron is around
section 共m兲
unity. The former is attributed to the formation of a cavity result-
ing from a high vapor pressure. The difference in depths increases
References with beam power. The observed depth-to-width ratios of fusion
关1兴 Chen, J. C., 1966, ‘‘A Correlation for Boiling Heat Transfer to Saturated zones in welding copper to iron can be greater than unity. A
Fluids in Convective Flows,’’ Ind. Eng. Chem. Process Des. Dev., 5, No. 3, unique maximum depth is near the joint plane, as a result of
pp. 322–329. strong convective mixing and high incident flux, even though the
关2兴 Shah, M. M., 1977, ‘‘A General Correlation for Heat Transfer During Sub-
cooled Boiling in Pipes and Annuli,’’ ASHRAE Trans., 83, pp. 202–215.
melting temperatures are different. Strong mixing is confirmed by
关3兴 Kandlikar, S. G., 1990, ‘‘A General Correlation of Saturated Two-Phase Flow measured concentration profiles across the fusion zones of dis-
Boiling Heat Transfer Inside Horizontal and Vertical Tubes,’’ ASME J. Heat similar metals. To a first approximation fusion zone depths with
Transfer, 112, pp. 219–228. depth-to-width ratios greater than or identical to unity are deter-
关4兴 Kandlikar, S. G., 1991, ‘‘Development of Flow Boiling Map for Subcooled
and Saturated Flow Boiling of Different Fluids Inside Circular Tubes,’’ ASME
mined from scale analyses of heat conduction equations in weld-
J. Heat Transfer, 113, pp. 190–200. ing the same metals with a high and low-power-density beam,
关5兴 Steiner, D., and Taborek, J., 1992, ‘‘Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in Vertical respectively. The propositions are verified by experimental re-
Tubes Correlated by an Asymptotic Model,’’ Heat Transfer Eng., 13, No. 2, sults. 关S0022-1481共00兲00103-1兴
pp. 43–66.
关6兴 Gungor, K. E., and Winterton, R. H. S., 1986, ‘‘A General Correlation for
Flow boiling in Tubes and Annuli,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 29, No. 3, pp. Keywords: Heat Transfer, Manufacturing, Phase Change, Scal-
351–358. ing, Welding
关7兴 Gungor, K. E., and Winterton, R. H. S., 1987, ‘‘Simplified General Correlation
for Saturated Flow Boiling and Comparison of Correlations with Data,’’
Chem. Eng. Res. Des., 65, pp. 148–156.
关8兴 Boyd, R. D., and Meng, X., 1995, ‘‘Boiling Curve Correlation for Subcooled Introduction
Flow Boiling,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 38, pp. 758–760.
关9兴 Liu, Z., and Winterton, R. H. S., 1991, ‘‘A General Correlation for Saturated Weldments are often made from dissimilar metals in order to
and Subcooled Flow Boiling in Tubes and Annuli, Based on a Nucleate Pool satisfy different requirements for performance. A successful weld
Boiling Equation,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 34, No. 3, pp. 2759–2763. between dissimilar metals is that it possesses sufficient tensile
关10兴 Peatiwala, Q., and Boyd, R. D., 1995, ‘‘Forced Convection and Flow Boiling
in a Single-Side Heated Vertical Smooth Channel with Downward Flow,’’ strength and ductility so that the joint will not fail. Such joints can
Proceedings of the ASME National Heat Transfer Conference, Vol. 314, be obtained in a variety of different metals and welding processes
ASME, New York, pp. 133–143. 共关1,2兴兲. The phenomena encountered in welding dissimilar metals
关11兴 Boyd, R. D., Smith, A., and Turknett, J., 1995, ‘‘Two-Dimensional Wall Tem- are complicated. Tinkler et al. 关3兴 observed that when samples
perature Measurements and Heat Transfer Enhancement for Top-Heated Hori-
zontal Channels With Flow Boiling,’’ Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci., 11, pp. 372– with different penetration characteristics were welded together,
386. the weld pool was displaced toward the material with the lower
关12兴 Reid, R. S., Pate, M. B., and Bergles, A. E., 1987, ‘‘Evaporation of Refrigerant sulfur content. Because sulfur is a surface active element, an in-
113 Flowing Inside Smooth Tubes,’’ ASME 87-HT-51. crease of sulfur content results in a decrease of surface tension
关13兴 Moffat, R. J., 1988, ‘‘Describing the Uncertainties in Experimental Results,’’
Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci., 1, pp. 3–17. 共关4兴兲. Hence, Mills and Keene 关5兴 interpreted that the flow from
关14兴 Moffat, R. J., 1990, ‘‘Estimating the Credibility of Experimental Work,’’ De- high sulfur to low sulfur results in the transport of hot metal to the
partment of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. low sulfur side. The melt back will occur preferentially in the low
关15兴 Chen, J. C., and Tuzla, K., 1995, ‘‘Contribution of Convection and Boiling to sulfur steel, and an asymmetric weld will be produced.
Convective Flow Boiling,’’ Convective Flow Boiling International Conference
Proceedings, Engineering Foundation, paper No. IV-10, Banff, Alberta, Recently, Chung and Wei 关6兴 and Wei and Chung 关7兴 computed
Canada. quasi-steady and unsteady velocity, temperature and concentration
关16兴 Boyd, R. D., 1989, ‘‘Subcooled Flow Boiling at 1.66 MPa Under Uniform fields, and shapes of the molten regions in welding dissimilar
High Heat Flux Conditions,’’ Fusion Technol., 16, pp. 324–330. metals. Imposing a Marangoni force on the flat free surface, as-
关17兴 Peatiwala, Q., and Boyd, R. D., 1996, ‘‘Subcooled Flow Boiling in Circum-
ferentially Non-Uniform and Uniform Heated Vertical Channels with Down-
ward Flow: Comparisons With Selected Two-Phase Correlations,’’ Process Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF
Enhanced and Multiphase Heat Transfer, R. M. Manglik and A. D. Kraus, HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division, July 7, 1998;
eds., Begell House, New York, pp. 183–189. revision received, January 14, 2000. Associate Technical Editor: D. Kaminski.
suming immiscible molten metals, and accounting for distinct k s 共 T m ⫺T ⬁ 兲 Q
properties between metals and phases, it was found that flow pat- wh⬃ or Q * ⫽c 1 Pe w . (4)
␣s U
terns depend on signs and magnitudes of surface-tension coeffi-
cients, the asymmetric temperature profile, and locations of the Evidently, Eq. 共4兲 is applicable for both low and high-power-
interface between dissimilar molten metals. In contrast to surface density welding. Linear relationships can be seen for both moving
widths, the depths are relatively insensitive to Marangoni convec- line and point sources in the range of a high Peclet number 共关10兴兲.
tion induced by negative surface tension coefficients of dissimilar Swift-Hook and Gick 关11兴 found c 1 ⫽2.07 in a high speed limit
molten metals. for analytical solutions in high-power-density welding. A gradual
In this study, the fusion zone shapes in welding dissimilar met- decrease in the slope of the dimensionless beam power as the
als are measured and analyzed. In the case of Marangoni convec- Peclet number decreases is attributed to the welding speed gradu-
tion induced by negative surface tension coefficients, the predic- ally reducing its effect on heat transfer. High and low-power-
tion of fusion zone depths based on a pure heat conduction model density welds are further discussed as follows:
is reliable. Scaling the heat conduction equation, the results deter-
mine the fusion zone depths in the joint of dissimilar metals. The (a) High-Power-Density Welding. The surface width of the
proposition is verified by photographic measurements. fusion zone can be scaled by the opening radius of the cavity or
the energy distribution parameter of the beam in the range of a
high Peclet number. This is because the surface width of the fu-
sion zone decreases with increasing welding speed. The surface
Experimental Procedure
width, however, cannot be less than the cavity opening radius.
A bead-on-plate weld was made for workpieces Al 1050, pure Replacing the surface width by the energy distribution parameter,
copper, and iron with an electron-beam welder having a maximum Eq. 共4兲 becomes
accelerating voltage of 60 kV and a welding current of 50 mA.
The joint planes were finished by a grinding machine and a
grinder polisher with a mixture of 1-mm alumina and water on
branners. It was further cleaned with spirits in an ultrasonic wave
cleaner to remove oxide layers and debris. The focal spot was
adjusted on the workpiece surface because of its strong influence
on the depth of penetration 共关8兴兲. After welding, the specimen was
cut, mounted, and polished by 800–2000 grit emery papers. High-
purity alumina of 1–0.05 mm were used for polishing. Chemical
solutions to etch the specimen were also required. The chemical
etchant for Al 1050 was 10 ml HF and 15 ml HCl, 90 ml H2O,
while that for Cu is 10 ml HNO3, 90 ml H2O and for Fe was 25
ml HNO3, and 75 ml H2O. The fusion zone was observed by a
zoom microstereoscope with magnification of 3–10. The coeffi-
cient of determination for the depths will be shown in the corre-
sponding figures. A scanning electron microstereoscope with EDS
共Energy Dispersive Spectrometer兲 was used to examine micro-
structures and analyze concentrations after polishing by the
grinder polisher with a mixture of 0.05-mm alumina and water on
branners.
System Model and Analysis

A low-power-density beam produces a molten region or fusion
zone with a depth-to-width ratio of around unity. On the other
hand, a high-power-density beam can produce a cavity or keyhole.
This results in a deep penetration with the depth-to-width ratio
much greater than unity 共关9兴兲. In this work, predictions of the
fusion zone depths are described as follows:
A Welding the Same Metals. The unsteady energy equa-
tion in the heat-affected zone around the molten pool is
⳵Ts ⳵Ts
⫺U ⫽ ␣ sⵜ 2T s . (1)
⳵t ⳵x
Provided that Eq. 共1兲 is scaled as
1 U ␣s
Ⰶ ⬃ (2)
t c ␦ T ␦ T2
which indicates that as time scale t c ⬎ ␣ s /U 2 a quasi-steady state
can be assumed. The global energy balance on the solid-liquid
interface is scaled by
T m ⫺T ⬁
ks wh⬃Q. (3)
␦T
In view of less than one-hundredth of beam power, latent heats for Fig. 1 Photographs of fusion zones in Al-Fe welding with ac-
melting and solidification can be ignored. A substitution of Eq. 共2兲 celerating voltage 50 kV, welding speed 0.04 mÕs, and welding
into Eq. 共3兲 leads to currents of „a… 12 mA, and „b… 20 mA
Q * ⫽c 2 Pe ␴ . (5) quence, the analyses in part A can be used effectively. The accu-
racy of this assumption is verified by experimental data, as will be
The use of the energy distribution parameter rather than the sur- seen later.
face width of the fusion zone or cavity opening radius is due to
the fact that the energy distribution function is an independent Results and Discussion
quantity that can be measured prior to welding. Furthermore, the Experimental measurements of the fusion zone depths in weld-
energy distribution parameter is related to the energy density in- ing aluminum or copper to iron were conducted. In contrast to the
cident on the surface of the workpiece. As the Peclet number surface widths, the depths of the fusion zones are relatively insen-
decreases a decrease in the welding speed increases the surface sitive to Marangoni convection induced by negative surface ten-
width of fusion zone 共关11,10兴兲. Hence, Eq. 共5兲 is inaccurate. sion coefficients of dissimilar molten metals 共关6,7兴兲. This is be-
cause most energy is transferred to the edges of the molten region
(b) Low-Power-Density Welding. Scaling the surface width
and the energy to the bottom is reduced. As a consequence, the
of the fusion zone in Eq. 共4兲 cannot be simply obtained, because
prediction of fusion zone depth based on a pure heat conduction
surface width is strongly affected by Marangoni convection. How-
model is more reliable. The effects of beam power on fusion zone
ever, in most cases, low-power-density welding induces the mol-
depths in welding aluminum to iron are shown in Fig. 1. The right
ten region with depth-to-width ratio of the order of unity 共关12兴兲.
and left-hand sides are iron and aluminum, respectively. A divi-
To a first approximation, it is feasible to choose w⬇h. Equation
sion in the ruler is a millimeter. Although fusion zone depths of
共5兲 then yields
aluminum and iron are different for a low power of 600 W, the
Uh depth-to-width ratios are of the order of unity, as shown in Fig.
⫽c 3 冑n. (6) 1共a兲. The difference in depths of aluminum and iron increases by
␣s increasing beam power to 1000 W, as presented in Fig. 1共b兲. The
The empirical constant c 3 depends on Marangoni convection, the depth-to-width ratio on the side of aluminum is around 3, which
energy distribution parameter, and several unknown minor effects. implies the existence of a cavity in the aluminum. In this study,
the fusion zone in aluminum is proposed to be modeled from a
B Welding Dissimilar Metals. A scale analysis for study- high-power-density welding. On the other hand, a unity depth-to-
ing the joint between dissimilar metals is difficult. To a first ap- width ratio in iron is simulated by a low-power-density welding.
proximation, it is proposed that the fusion zones in dissimilar The formation of the cavity in aluminum results from a higher
metals are, separately, identical to the fusion zones in welding the vapor pressure 共关13兴兲. Considering the free surface temperature to
same metals. For example, the fusion zones on the sides of alu- be 2000 K, vapor pressures of Fe and Al are, respectively, around
minum and iron in Al-Fe welding are determined by the fusion 40 and 800 Pa. The sharp boundary between fusion zones of alu-
zones in Al-Al and Fe-Fe welding, respectively. As a conse- minum and iron is due to the same order of magnitude of Ma-
Fig. 2 „a… Fusion zone, and concentration profiles at „b… upper, „c… intermediate, and „d… lower locations in Al-Fe welding with
beam power 1000 W and welding speed 0.045 mÕs
Fig. 3 Photographs of fusion zones in „a… Al-Al, and „b… Fe-Fe
welding with accelerating voltage 50 kV, welding current 20
mA, and welding speed 0.04 mÕs
Fig. 4 Photographs of fusion zones in Fe-Cu welding with ac-

rangoni numbers with negative surface tension coefficients for celerating voltage 50 kV, welding speed 0.025 mÕs, and welding
dissimilar molten metals. The molten pool is not well mixed, be- current of „a… 20 mA, and „b… 30 mA
cause fluid flow is upward near the interface between dissimilar
molten metals and velocity component normal to the interface is
small.
Figure 2 shows profiles of concentration on three horizontal Fig. 1共b兲, it is found that the fusion zone depths of aluminum in
planes across fusion zones of aluminum and iron. Metals on the the joints between the same metals and dissimilar metals are
left and right-hand sides of Fig. 2共a兲 are, respectively, iron and roughly the same as shown in Fig. 3共a兲, even though the fusion
aluminum. Concentration profiles of aluminum and iron at an up- zone shapes are different. Depths of the fusion zone in iron are
per position are shown in Fig. 2共b兲. The upper figure represents also similar in welding the same and dissimilar metals, as shown
roughness on the position measured. The total length for measur- in Fig. 3共b兲. This leads to a proposition to determine the fusion
ing is 2.941⫻10⫺3 m. The lower two figures, respectively, show zone depth of a dissimilar joint from an analysis of the same
concentration profiles of aluminum and iron. The ordinate denotes metals.
concentration from 0 to 100 percent while the abscissa is horizon- Figures 4共a兲 and 共b兲 show the variations of the fusion zone with
tal spatial location. It can be seen that a rather sharp boundary beam power in welding copper and iron. Evidently, an increase in
exists between the solidified aluminum and iron. Hence, molten beam power increases depths of fusion zones. Depths of copper
metals of aluminum and iron are immiscible during melting and and iron are nearly identical in contrast to the joint between alu-
solidification processes 共关6,7兴兲. Since the sum of the concentra- minum and iron as shown previously. Although vapor pressures of
tions for aluminum and iron is less than 100 percent 共atom per- molten iron and copper are, respectively, around 40 and 400 Pa,
centage兲, other minor elements such as Si, Mg, Zn, P, S, and Ti mixing due to strong Marangoni convection, as can be seen later,
exist in the fusion zone. Similar results are shown in Figs. 2共c兲 reduces the distinct depths of the fusion zone in iron and copper.
and 共d兲. Several sudden drops take place in the bulk phase of In contrast to that in welding Al-Fe, strong Marangoni mixing is
aluminum due to the existence of pores by referring to the figures attributed to a significant difference in the product of the surface
for roughness. tension coefficient-to-dynamic viscosity ratio with temperature
An investigation of the difference in the fusion zones in weld- gradient 共or Marangoni number兲 between dissimilar molten metals
ing dissimilar metals and the same metals is crucial. Referring to 共关6,7兴兲. Interestingly, even though the melting temperatures of
Fig. 6 Measured and predicted dimensionless beam power
versus Peclet number for different beam powers in Fe-Cu weld-
ing
Fig. 7 Measured and predicted dimensionless beam power

versus Peclet number for Al in Al-Fe welding with different
beam powers
Fig. 5 „a… Fusion zone, and concentration profiles at „b… upper

and „c… lower locations in Fe-Cu welding with beam power 1000
W and welding speed 0.04 mÕs
copper and iron are, respectively, 1358 and 1810 K, the difference
in depths of the fusion zone or the solid-to-liquid interface in
copper and iron is negligible. This is attributed to a high tempera-
ture gradient near the cavity base. If the beam power is 1000 W,
the energy distribution parameter is 1 mm while the liquid thermal
conductivity is 100 W/m-K, and the temperature gradient at the Fig. 8 Measured and predicted Peclet number versus square
cavity base is 3.2⫻106 K/m 共关14兴兲. A temperature difference of root of operating parameter for Fe in Al-Fe welding with differ-
452 K then occurs in a distance of 1.4⫻10⫺4 m, which is only ent beam powers
five percent of the fusion zone depth. Figure 5 shows concentra-
tion profiles of iron and copper on two horizontal planes across to iron is shown in Fig. 6. Thermal properties are chosen to be the
the fusion zones. Metals on the left and right-hand sides of Fig. mean values evaluated at the temperature between the ambient
5共a兲 are, respectively, iron and copper. Strong mixing is revealed and melting temperatures and dissimilar metals. The energy dis-
by gradual variations in the concentrations of iron and copper in tribution parameter is estimated to be 0.5 mm. Equation 共5兲 gov-
fusion zones, as shown in Figs. 5共b兲 and 共c兲. erning a deep penetration shows an agreement with experimental
The dimensionless beam power versus Peclet number, with the data for different beam powers and welding speeds. The devia-
energy distribution parameter as a length scale, in welding copper tions between the predictions and measurements can be due to
rough approximations for the relationship between the width and References
depth of the fusion zone and the energy distribution parameter, an 关1兴 Sun, Z., and Moisio, T., 1994, ‘‘Effect of Processing Parameters on Laser
incomplete absorption by the workpiece surface, and inherent un- Welded Dissimilar Steel Joints,’’ Weld. J. 共Miami兲, 73, pp. 63–70.
certainties in thermal properties. The dimensionless beam power 关2兴 Cary, H. B., 1989, Modern Welding Technology, 2nd Ed., Prentice-Hall,
versus Peclet number for aluminum in welding aluminum to iron Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pp. 555–559.
is shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that experimental data are close 关3兴 Tinkler, M. J., Grant, I., Mizuno, G., and Gluck, C., 1983, ‘‘The Effects of
to Eq. 共5兲 for different beam powers and welding speeds. Figure 8 Residual Impurity and Microalloying Elements on Weldability and Weld Prop-
erties,’’ Paper 29, The Welding Institute, Abington, UK.
shows the measured Peclet number, with the depth of iron as a 关4兴 Belton, G. R., 1976, ‘‘Langmuir Adsorption, the Gibbs Adsorption Isotherm,
length scale, versus the square root of operating parameter in and Interfacial Kinetics in Liquid Metal Systems,’’ Metall. Trans. B, 7B, pp.
welding aluminum to iron. It is found to agree quite well with the 35–42.
prediction from Eq. 共6兲 based on low-power-density welding. 关5兴 Mills, K. C., and Keene, B. J., 1990, ‘‘Factors Affecting Variable Weld Pen-
etration,’’ Int. Mater. Rev., 35, pp. 185–216.
Nomenclature 关6兴 Chung, F. K., and Wei, P. S., 1999, ‘‘Mass, Momentum, and Energy Transport
in Molten Pool When Welding Dissimilar Metals,’’ ASME J. Heat Transfer,
c 1 ,c 2 ,c 3 ⫽ empirical constant 121, pp. 451–461.
h ⫽ fusion zone depth 关7兴 Wei, P. S., and Chung, F. K., 2000, ‘‘Unsteady Marangoni Flow in Molten
k ⫽ thermal conductivity Pool When Welding Dissimilar Metals,’’ Metall. Mater. Trans., submitted for
n ⫽ operating parameter ⬅QU/ 关 ␣ s k s (T m ⫺T ⬁ ) 兴 publication.
关8兴 Wei, P. S., and Chow, Y. T., 1992, ‘‘Beam Focusing Characteristics and
Pe ⫽ Peclet number, Pew ⬅Uw/ ␣ s , Pe␴ ⬅U ␴ / ␣ s
Alloying Element Effects on High-Intensity Electron Beam Welding,’’ Metall.
Q ⫽ beam power, Q * ⬅Q/ 关 hk s (T m ⫺T ⬁ ) 兴 Trans. B, 23B, pp. 81–90.
T,T m ,T ⬁ ⫽ temperature, melting, and ambient temperatures 关9兴 Tong, H., and Giedt, W. H., 1970, ‘‘A Dynamic Interpretation of Electron
U ⫽ welding speed Beam Welding,’’ Weld. J. 共Miami兲, 49, pp. 259s–266s.
w ⫽ surface width 关10兴 Elmer, J. W., Giedt, W. H., and Eagar, T. W., 1990, ‘‘The Transition from
x ⫽ Cartesian coordinate along welding line Shallow to Deep Penetration During Electron Beam Welding,’’ Weld. J. 共Mi-
ami兲, 69, pp. 167s–176s.
Greek Letters 关11兴 Swift-Hook, D. T., and Gick, A. E. F., 1973, ‘‘Penetration Welding With
Lasers,’’ Weld. J. 共Miami兲, 52, pp. 492s–499s.
␣ ⫽ thermal diffusivity 关12兴 Christensen, N., Davies, V. de L., and Gjermundsen, K., 1965, ‘‘Distribution
␦ T ⫽ heat-affected zone thickness of Temperatures in Arc Welding,’’ Br. Weld. J., 12, pp. 54–75.
␴ ⫽ energy distribution parameter 关13兴 Schauer, D. A., and Giedt, W. H., 1978, ‘‘Prediction of Electron Beam Weld-
Subscript ing Spiking Tendency,’’ Weld. J. 共Miami兲, 57, pp. 189s–195s.
关14兴 Heiple, C. R., and Roper, J. R., 1982, ‘‘Mechanism for Minor Element Effect
s ⫽ solid on GTA Fusion Zone Geometry,’’ Weld. J. 共Miami兲, 61, pp. 97s–102s.
Journal of
Heat Transfer Discussion
Discussion: ‘‘Heat Transfer equations leads to different results that differ from those put forth
in their paper. Specifically, some of the calculated values of Nu f ⬁
Measurement and Analysis for Sintered for d p ⫽1.59 mm in Fig. 6 of their paper are incorrect. This can be
Porous Channels’’ „Hwang, G. J., proven by comparing their numerical results with the exact Nu f ⬁ ,
which is obtained from analytical solutions for velocity and tem-
and Chao, C. H., 1994, ASME J. Heat perature distributions in the case of no dispersion. The momentum
Eq. 共9兲 in their paper can be analytically solved to yield the
Transfer, 116, pp. 456–464… closed-form solution for the velocity distribution as follows 共关1兴兲:
S. J. Kim and D. Kim

Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST,
U⫽ 冉冊冉z⫹1
z⫺1
2
3U ⬁ ⫹
3
2F s 冊
⫺2U ⬁ ⫺
3
2F s
, (1)
Taejon, Korea where
⫺1⫹ 冑1⫹4F s C
Our purpose in this discussion is to demonstrate that some of
Red K
the results stated in Hwang and Chao’s paper appear to be in F s⫽ F 冑K, Da⫽ , U ⬁⫽
error. We can show that a recalculation of Hwang and Chao’s dp ␧H 2 2F s
冑 3
冑 3
冋冑册
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫹ 3U ⬁ ⫹
¦
2F s 2F s 2F s 1 1
U ⫹ for 0⭐Y ⭐
冑冑
exp Y
3 3 Da ⬁ Da 2
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫺ 3U ⬁ ⫹
2F s 2F s
z共 Y 兲⫽
冑 3
冑 3
冋冑册
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫹ 3U ⬁ ⫹
2F s 2F s 2F s 1 1
exp 共 1⫺Y 兲 U ⫹ ⭐Y ⭐1.
冑冑
for
3 3 Da ⬁ Da 2
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫺ 3U ⬁ ⫹
2F s 2F s
In the case of no dispersion, energy Eqs. 共10兲 and 共11兲 in their

paper can be reduced to ␪ s⫽
Bi
B 冋冉
12 U ⬁ ⫹
1
2F s 冊再 2
1
A exp B ⫺1
2
⫺
1
冉冊
A⫺1
冎
册冋
d 2␪ s Bi U ⬁
0⫽Bi共 ␪ f ⫺ ␪ s 兲 ⫹ (2) ⫺U ⬁ 共 ln A⫹B 兲 Y ⫹ 兵共 ln z 兲 2 ⫺ 共 ln A 兲 2 其
dY 2 B 2
U⫽ ␪ s ⫺ ␪ f . (3)
冉
⫺12 U ⬁ ⫹
1
2F s
ln 冊
A 共 z⫺1 兲
共 A⫺1 兲 z
, 册 (5a)
Equations 共2兲 and 共3兲 can be merged into Eq. 共4兲.

for 1/2⭐Y ⭐1,
d 2␪ s
dY 2
⫽BiU (4) ␪ s⫽
Bi
B 冋U ⬁ ln A⫺12 U ⬁ ⫹
1
冉 1
2F s A⫺1
Y⫹
Bi U ⬁
B 2 冊册
兵共 ln z 兲 2 冋
By integrating Eq. 共4兲, the analytical solution for the solid tem-
⫺ 共 ln A⫹B 兲 2 其 ⫺12 U ⬁ ⫹ 冉 1
冊
2F s
ln
A exp共 B 兲共 z⫺1 兲
共 A exp共 B 兲 ⫺1 兲 z
册
, (5b)
perature distribution can be obtained as follows:
for 0⭐Y ⭐1/2, where
Fig. 2 Comparison of the fully developed Nusselt number
persion兲, similar deviations between our results 共dotted line兲 and

the results of Hwang and Chao 共single-dotted broken line兲 exist
for Red⬎200, as shown in Fig. 1共b兲. Note that ‘‘w⫽⬁’’ in Fig. 6
of their paper should be replaced by ‘‘w⫽0.’’
In addition, it is worth mentioning that Hwang and Chao em-
ploy an inappropriate assumption in their paper. They assumed
that the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid is negligible.
However, the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid is not
negligible in comparison with the thermal dispersion conductivity
when Red is small, because the thermal dispersion conductivity
decreases with Red . Red in their paper ranges from 0 to 500 which
is not large enough to neglect the effective thermal conductivity.
Hence in their case the neglect of the effective thermal conduc-
tivity of the fluid can result in more than a ten percent error.
Hwang and Chao proposed that D t ⫽0.375 and w⫽1.5 in order
to match their numerical results to the experimental results by
using the inappropriate assumption and their simulation code.
Now we tried to obtain the more appropriate values of D t and w
for which our numerical results, without neglecting effective ther-
mal conductivity, can match the experimental data of Hwang and
Chao. From Eqs. 共11兲 and 共12兲 in their paper, it can be clearly
Fig. 1 Comparisons of the fully developed Nusselt number;
„a… analytical result for no dispersion, „b… numerical results for
seen that increasing D t or decreasing w has the same effect on the
limiting cases thermal dispersion conductivity. Therefore, by adjusting either D t
or w, it is possible to match the numerical results to the experi-
mental results. In our numerical simulation, D t is selected as a
variable for adjustment, since D t is proportional to the thermal
冑 3
冑 3 dispersion conductivity, as shown in Eq. 共11兲 in their paper. On
冑
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫹ 3U ⬁ ⫹ the other hand, w is fixed at 1.5 which has been consistently used
2F s 2F s 2F s 1
U ⫹ in previous studies 共关2,3兴兲. From our numerical simulation for the
冑冑
A⫽ , B⫽ .
3 3 Da ⬁ Da condition that Hwang and Chao proposed, it can be shown that
2U ⬁ ⫹ ⫺ 3U ⬁ ⫹
2F s 2F s D t ⫽0.375 and w⫽1.5 are not appropriate, as denoted by broken
lines in Fig. 2. Without using the assumption of Hwang and Chao,
Now the fluid temperature distribution can be obtained by rear-
which neglects the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid, our
ranging Eq. 共3兲 as
numerical results are shown to be in good agreement with the
␪ f ⫽ ␪ s ⫺U. (6) experimental results of Hwang and Chao when D t ⫽1.4 and w
⫽1.5, as denoted by solid lines in Fig. 2.
From the definition of the overall Nusselt number, the analytical
form of Nu f ⬁ can be obtained as References
5k s* Bi 关1兴 Kuznetsov, A. V., 1999, ‘‘Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer in the Interface
Nu f ⬁ ⫽⫺ , (7) Region Between a Porous Medium and a Fluid Layer: A Boundary Layer
3k f ␪ f b Solution,’’ J. Porous Media, 2, pp. 309–321.
关2兴 Cheng, P., and Hsu, C. T., 1986, ‘‘Applications of Van Driest’s Mixing Length
where ␪ f b ⫽ 兰 10 U ␪ f dY . Theory to Transverse Thermal Dispersion in Forced Convective Flow Through
Figure 1 shows the relation between Nu f ⬁ and Red . For the a Packed Bed,’’ Int. Commun. Heat Mass Transfer, 13, pp. 613–625.
关3兴 Hunt, M. L., and Tien, C. L., 1988, ‘‘Effects of Thermal Dispersion on Forced
case of w⫽⬁ 共no dispersion兲, the numerical results 共broken line兲 Convection in Fibrous Media,’’ Int. J. Heat Mass Transf., 31, pp. 301–309.
of Hwang and Chao start deviating from the analytical results
共double-dotted broken line兲 of Eq. 共7兲 when Red⬎200, as shown
in Fig. 1共a兲. In contrast with the results of Hwang and Chao,
results from our numerical simulation 共double-dotted broken line Note from the Editor: Professor G. J. Hwang passed away last
in Fig. 1共b兲兲 for the same problem are in excellent agreement with year, and despite repeated attempts, the Editor was unable to lo-
the exact Nu f ⬁ of Eq. 共7兲共double-dotted broken line in Fig. 1共a兲兲. cate or contact the second author, C. H. Chao. Any response from
For another limiting case where D t ⫽0.375, w⫽0 共maximum dis- Dr. Chao will be published in a later issue.

J Heat Transfer 2000 Vol 122 N3

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

J Heat Transfer 2000 Vol 122 N3

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

J Heat Transfer 2000 Vol 122 N3

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Transactions Journal of

of the ASME Heat Transfer ®

Journal of Heat Transfer Volume 122, Number 3 AUGUST 2000

Natural and Mixed Convection

„Contents continued on facing page…

Journal of Heat Transfer Volume 122, Number 3 AUGUST 2000

626 Fusion Zone Shapes in Electron-Beam Welding Dissimilar Metals

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND SPECIAL NOTES

640 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

M. Bussmann, S. D. Aziz, S. Chandra, and J. Mostaghimi

J. S. Park, C. McCarty, and K. D. Kihm

Samuel S. Mao, Ralph Greif, Xianglei Mao, and Richard E. Russo

Ichiro Nakane and Akira Narumi

Michele Ferland, Debasish Mishra, and Vishwanath Prasad

From Heat Transfer Principles to

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 431

Distribution of Void Space for Flow Channels

432 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

From Principle to Internal Structure

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 433

The fundamental problem is how to connect an entire volume with

434 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

artist. Again, every single geometric feature of the cooling scheme

Fig. 6 How optimal shape is derived from the minimization of

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 435

436 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Fig. 10 The optimized eighth construct „†42‡…

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 437

Figure n2 (T max⫺Tmin)mink0 /(q⵮A2) (H 2 /L 2 ) 1/2

13共a兲 2 0.0379 1.412

changes. The optimal inclination is similar to that of tributaries in

438 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 439

440 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 441

442 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

known as fin trees and fin bushes 共关61,62兴兲.

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 443

Trees for Fluid Flow

444 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 445

Trees of Convective Heat Currents: Heat Loss Versus

446 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 447

448 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 449

Keywords: Conduction, Heat Transfer, Inverse, Nonintrusive Diagnostics, Properties

1 Introduction verse parameter identification problems 共关2–5兴兲. They are often

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 451

452 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 453

454 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 455

456 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Our inverse boundary element method algorithm was attempted

Fig. 6 Variation of thermal conductivity versus temperature

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 457

458 Õ Vol. 122, AUGUST 2000 Transactions of the ASME

Journal of Heat Transfer AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 459

冉冊 ⳵J p Step 4: Calculate the objective function. Terminate the iteration