Turbulent convective heat transfer in an inclined cylinder with liquid sodium

etc15 Tracking Number 425

The natural turbulent convection of liquid sodium in a cell with end heat exchangers providing a fixed temperature drop is investigated experimentally. The cell is a straight thermally isolated tube with inner diameter D = 96 mm and length L ≈ 20D. Experiments are carried out for a fixed Rayleigh number Ra = 2.4 • 10^6 and for different tube orientations with respect to the gravity. A strong dependence of power transferred along the tube on the inclination angle is discovered: Nusselt number varies by an order in the investigated range of angles with a maximum approximately at 65 degrees to the vertical. Presented characteristics of the large-scale circulation (LSC) and turbulent temperature fluctuations demonstrate the fact that the convective heat transfer is mainly determined by the velocity of the LSC.