Natural convection in a porous resistance channel heated from one side

Heat transfer with convection is divided into two as natural and forced convection. Natural convection takes place with the effect of temperature difference and depending on fluid motion without an any external influence. While it has been encountered by many different forms of natural convection, studies have been conducted upon engineering applications and his improvement in a wide area. In this study, the effect of heat transfer with natural convection of metal materials with open-pore triangle and trapezoid geometry which are placed on a rectangular vertical channel which is heated from one side and the other sides are isolated, has been empirically analyzed. Air has been chosen as a working fluid. The study has been taken place in the laminar fluid conditions and between the values of 1×105 and 2×108 of the Rayleigh number. Also, open-pore metal foams having the values of 10, 20 and 30 ppi (pores per inch) have been glued on the heating surface. In the study, geometric parameters, the height of metal foams placed on heating surface which is kept fixed channel geometry has been determined as 10; 25 and 20 mm and the aspect ratio has been 0; 0,33 and 0,66. Constant heat flux has been applied on the heating surface and conducted experiments on different values of heat flux. Temperature measurements have been carried out with the help of thermal camera and thermocouples which are calibrated. PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) technique has been used for the speed measurement. To limit the number of experiment and save time, Design-Expert commercial programme has been used. According to the findings, when aspect ratio a/b and the number of Rayleigh will be increase and heat transfer increases, pore density will be increase and heat transfer will be decrease.