- Author
-
Lee, S. L.
- Title
- Natural Convection Above a Line Fire.
- Coporate
- Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA
- Report
-
Thesis
January 1961
122 p.
- Keywords
-
natural convection
|
plumes
|
experiments
|
high temperature gases
|
liquid fuels
- Identifiers
- two-dimensional natural convection above a steady finite source of heated fluid in a uniform ambient fluid; estimate of net radiation loss from luninous acetone flames to the surroundings
- Abstract
- The behavior of a natural convection plume above a line fire is studied both theoretically and experimentally. In the theoretical treatment, a turbulent plume above a steady two-dimensional finite source of heated fluid in a uniform ambient fluid is investigated. In the performance of the experiment, hot gases, resulting from the burning of a liquid fuel in a long channel burner, are driven upwards by buoyancy and gradually cooled and slowed down by the entrained ambient air. The average temperature along lines parallel to the channel burner are measured by a piece of resistance wire and automatically recorded. Previous theoretical work has primarily concentrated on studies of turbulent natural convection plumes from idealized point or line sources of infinitesimal physical size and infinite buoyancy intensity. The methods used in these studies may be divided into two types: Prandtl's mixing length theory of turbulence and a simpler lateral entrainment asumption introduced by Taylor. Morton used the lateral entrainment assumption to study the plume issuing from an axially symmetrical finite source of mass, momentum and buoyancy. His result depends on the solution for the case of a ficticious point source of momentum and buoyancy.