ISSN Online: 2377-424X
ISBN Print: 0-85295-345-3
International Heat Transfer Conference 10
A NON-INTRUSIVE COMPUTER AUTOMATED INVESTIGATION OF NATURAL CONVECTION USING THERMOCHROMIC LIQUID CRYSTALS AND COMPARISON WITH NUMERICAL SIMULATION
Abstrakt
This paper presents an experimental and numerical study of natural convection in a closed cavity heated "from below". The authors use a fully automated method for hue based color recognition (ARCA, Braun et al., 1993), that allows non-intrusive temperature determination in the fluid by quantification of the hue changes in the chiral-nematic thermochromic liquid crystals(TLC) mixed with the fluid. A Full Flow Field Tracking (FFFT, Braun et al., 1992) algorithm is used for determination of the fluid velocities. The experimental temperature and velocity maps are then compared to results generated by a computer algorithm based on the numerical solution of a conservative form of the Navier-Stokes equations. The finite difference formulation uses the control volume approach applied to a collocated grid. The comparison yields good qualitative and quantitative agreement.