Thermal Engineering Design Project: Heat Transfer from a Cylinder in Crossflow

Abstract

A novel thermal engineering design project involving heat transfer from a cylinder in crossflow is described. The class assignment required design of equipment, trial-and-error experimentation, data collection, and data reduction to obtain a heat transfer correlation without the use of a wind or water tunnel. The student designs involved the use of moving cars, flowing creeks, and spinning wheels as the means of obtaining the free-stream velocity; the author used a pedalled bicycle. Data reduction accounted for radiation and employed the lumped heat capacity method. The 18 student groups plus the author produced 132 data points which were collectively plotted on a modified Nusselt number versus Reynolds number plane. All of these data produced a correlation which deviated form a published empirical correlation by about 12%.