Abstract
Natural convective flow and heat transfer around a row of vertical heated plates were investigated both analytically and experimentally. Main concerns are directed to an effect of plate numbers on the fluid flow and heat transfer around the plate arrays. In order to simulate the flow and temperature fields around the rows of plates, full elliptic equations for the momentum and energy transport were solved numerically using the computational domain that encloses the whole plates. The results showed that the present elliptic analysis well predicts the plume interaction and also the local heat transfer coefficients of the plates. The results also depict that the velocity profiles and induced flow rates in between the pairs of plates depend strongly on the numbers and situations of the plates. This also results in marked differences in the local heat transfer coefficients of the plates.
