Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer of Opposing Mixed Convection adjacent to Upward-Facing, Inclined Heated Plates

Experimental investigations have been carried out for opposing mixed convective flows of air over uniformly heated plates. The experiments covered the ranges of the Reynolds and modified Rayleigh numbers as ; ReL-7 .2 x 102 - 1 x 104 and RaL*=5 x 106 - 8 x 108, and the inclination angles as ; 0=15 to 75 deg from horizontal. The flow fields over plates were visualized with smoke. The results showed that a separation of forced boundary layer flow occurs first at the trailing edge, and then, the separation point shifts toward upstream with increasing the wall heat flux, and finally, reaches to the leading edge nf the plates. It was also found that the separations at the trailing and leading edges are correlated well with the non-dimensional parameter as ; (GrillRei.5) =0.35 and 1.0, respectively. The local heat transfer coefficients of the inclined plates were also measured and the results showed that minimum coefficients appear in the separation region. Moreover, it was revealed that the forced, natural and combined convective flows can be classified by the non-dimensional parameter (Gril