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Augment convection on underside of inclined plate

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MCarbone

Mechanical
Mar 30, 2009
1
Does anyone know of any static devices that may improve the boundary layer to augment natural convection on the underside of a heated inclined plane? I have no freedom to modify the plane itself, such as adding fins. The underside of the plate is about a meter and a half long (bottom to top), is very wide, and is inclined at 45 degrees. (It is like a pitched roof section with a vertical wall above it. It can hit 40C over ambient on a day, and it needs to be cooled just a bit.) I did a quick check and found that the thermal boundary layer is over 20 inches thick at the top. Is there any way to manage the buoyancy driven air flow, say with louvers or some other fixed device, to mix cooler air into the bl or increase the velocity near the surface? I don't need much of an improvement. Thanks in advance for any insights.
 
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If I'm not mistaken the thickness of boundary layer is directly proportional to the length of the plate and inversely proportional to the square root of the Reynolds number [Re].

Therefore, cutting the air path by putting, say, some kind of baffle near the plate surface, could be of help.

If you would allow it, a fan with some kind of air distributing device over the whole width of the plate would increase the Re reducing the thickness of the boundary layer.
 
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