Effect of Edge Conditions on Natural Convective Heat Transfer from Narrow Vertical Plates

Abstract

In Chaps. 2 and 3, the discussion of heat transfer from narrow plates was restricted to the situation where the heated plate was imbedded in a large plane adiabatic surface, the surfaces of the heated plane, and the adiabatic surface being in the same plane. However, it is to be expected that the magnitude of the edge effects will depend, in general, on the boundary conditions existing near the edge of the plate. To investigate how important this effect is likely to be attention has been given to the natural convective heat transfer from a plate where there are only plane adiabatic surfaces above and below the heated plate and the vertical edges of the plate are, thus, directly exposed to the surrounding fluid, it being assumed that the plate and the adiabatic top and bottom surfaces are thin. Attention has also been given to the case where the plate is protruding from the adiabatic surface. Results are presented both for the case where the plate is isothermal and to the case where there is a uniform heat flux over the plate surface.