On the natural transition of the natural convection boundary layer under a constant heat flux condition

Abstract

This study investigates the thermo-fluidic characteristics of a natural convection boundary layer over a vertical plate heated under a constant heat flux condition. We used particle image velocimetry to observe the surface convection velocity at the proximity of the plate, which is submerged in a water chamber with Rayleigh number, Ra=7×109 and Prandtl number, Pr = 8.1. The velocity distributions indicated the presence of distinct stripe-like flow structures in the early transition (upstream) region and that of distinct negative–positive Λ-shaped flow structures in the downstream region. In addition, the temporal variation of spanwise and streamwise velocity components was presented. Furthermore, proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis was used to reduce the complexity of the flow structure and retain the most salient characteristics of the flow field. Our results confirmed the existence of a very weak inceptive oscillation in the behaviour of POD time coefficients in the upstream region.

Keywords

• Natural convection
• Natural transition
• Boundary layers
• POD