ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the fundamentals of convection and the concepts required by the engineer to use heat transfer coefficient correlations effectively. It presents correlations for a wide range of commonly encountered flows. Experimental data for convective heat transfer coefficients, as well as the results of analysis, can be conveniently and concisely organized as relationships between dimensionless groups of the pertinent variables. The preceding dimensional analyses of forced and natural convection have served to introduce the dimensionless groups commonly used in the study of heat convection. The heat transfer correlations all apply to an isothermal surface: other wall boundary conditions. All the foregoing correlations for external flows are valid for an isothermal surface. Correlations are also available for a uniform wall heat flux, for which the local Nusselt numbers tend to be higher than their counterparts for an isothermal surface. Appropriately averaged Nusselt numbers are far less sensitive to the wall boundary condition.
