Thermally Developing Forced Convection in a Horizontal Equilateral Triangular Channel

Abstract

An experimental investigation was carried out to study thermally developing fully developed laminar forced convection in a horizontal equilateral triangular channel where the channel surface was heated uniformly. The channel length was (1.5 m) long and constructed from three plane (100 mm) walls to form the equilateral triangular cross section. The experiments were conducted for three mass flow rates (1.91×10-3, 2.54×10- 3 and 3.03×10-3 kg/s) and four heat fluxes (91, 171, 272 and 406 W/m2). Reynolds number range was (1198  Re 1988). It was found that local Nusselt number increasing as the heat fluxes and the mass flow rate increased. Also it was found that the greatest local Nusselt number value was in the beginning of the channel then it decreased accompanied by growing the thermal boundary layer along the channel. Present experimental results have a good agreement with previous results obtained for similarlyconfigured channels.