Abstract
Heat transfer mechanism across the wind-driven air-water interface was investigated through laboratory experiments in a wind-wave tank. Heat transfer coefficient on the water side was measured through evaporation experiments and the distribution of water surface temperature was measured using an infrared imaging technique. The results show that the increasing behavior of heat transfer coefficient on the water side against wind-speed becomes gentle and tends to level off in the middle wind-speed region. It indicates that the traditional assumption based on the proportionality between heat transfer coefficient on the air side and wind-speed is not correct. In contrast, heat transfer coefficient on the water side increases approximately in proportion to the frequency of the appearance of surface renewal eddies for whole wind-speed region. This result suggests that heat transfer across a wind-driven air-water interface is dominated by the surface renewal motion near the air-water interface.
