Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.
A heated vertical plate generates a buoyant boundary layer
that rises up its surface, growing in width as it rises. If suction
is applied to the surface of the plate then at some height the
buoyant layer ceases to grow and its width no longer varies in
the vertical direction. Analytic expressions exist for this fully
developed region based on the assumption of uniform suction.
If however the suction is through holes that have a diameter or
spacing that is significant with respect to the thickness of the
thermal boundary layer, then the assumption of uniform suction
is questionable. This paper uses CFD to model the flow for this
case of non-negligible hole diameter and spacing, and presents
results for how the heat transfer differs from the case of
uniform suction.
