Abstract
We present an experimental study on the dynamics of a starting plume induced by rectangular heating surface. Starting plume is the initial stage that thermal plume induced by a heating surface. The research on scaling of plumes has a long history. However, it is difficult to measure the scaling of starting plume, because the flow pattern of scaling is complex. In the present study, PIV measurement is applied to the starting plume. Results show that there are two plumes induced at the edge of heating surface in the initial stages. Then two plumes join with each other, and finally form one unified object. In addition, the characteristics of starting plume are also studied by numerical simulation. It is found that the velocity field of starting plumes obtained by the experiments in accordance with that obtained by the numerical simulation. The temperature fields obtained by the numerical simulation provide a reference base for the LIF measurement in the future research.
