Analysis of Natural Convection in a Low Gravity Environment

Ethan Mattor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
William W. Durgin, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Peter Blonznalis, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Richard Schoenberg, Johnson Space Center, TX

Article comments

AIAA 92-0603. Reprinted with permission of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. Publisher website: http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=2.

NOTE: At the time of publication, the author William W. Durgin was not yet affiliated with Cal Poly.

Abstract

Natural convection inside a spherical container was studied experimentally with two apparatuses at low buoyancy levels. The data generated by these experiments, plotted nondimensionally as the Nusselt versus Rayleigh numbers, gives correlations for Rayleigh numbers between 10³ and 10⁸, a range which was previously untested. These results show that natural convection has significant effects at a Rayleigh number of 10>sup>3 and higher, although the behavior of the Nusselt number as the conduction limit is approached is still unknown for a spherical geometry.