An experimental device was designed to perform the thermal and dynamic study of natural convection airflow in an open vertical channel. The two side walls of the vertical channel are made of Plexiglas allowing the visualization of the flow via the particle image velocimetry (PIV) method. For the two other vertical walls, one is heated at a constant temperature, and the other is insulated with a 9-cm thick polystyrene insulation. The dynamic characterization of convection is carried out by nonintrusive measurements (PIV), and thermal phenomena are analyzed using nonintrusive heat flux instrumentation (simultaneous temperature and velocity measurements have been carried out across the channel at different elevations). Moreover, this study deals with the influence of the Rayleigh number on the measured vertical velocity profiles as well as the thermal flux densities recorded along the heated wall. To do this, different values of the modified Rayleigh numbers were considered in the interval with the channel aspect ratio of A = 5 and A = 12.5. The obtained Nusselt number values have been compared successfully with those of the literature. The impacts of the Rayleigh number and the aspect ratio on the velocity profiles and the convective and radiative heat transfer have been examined.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.