Ga. Ledezma et A. Bejan, OPTIMAL GEOMETRIC ARRANGEMENT OF STAGGERED VERTICAL PLATES IN NATURAL-CONVECTION, Journal of heat transfer, 119(4), 1997, pp. 700-708
This paper documents the geometric optimization of an assembly of stag
gered vertical plates that are installed in a fixed volume, The heat t
ransfer is by laminar natural convection. The objective is to maximize
the overall thermal conductance between the assembly of plates and th
e surrounding fluid. The geometric parameters that vary are the horizo
ntal spacing between adjacent columns of plates, the number of plates
mounted in each vertical column, the plate dimensions, and the stagger
between columns. The optimization is performed numerically and experi
mentally in the range Pr = 0.72 and 10(3) less than or equal to Ra-L l
ess than or equal to 10(6), where Ra-L is the Rayleigh number based on
the vertical dimension of the assembly(L). The results for the optima
l horizontal spacing are correlated using formulas derived from the th
eory of the intersection of asymptotes (Bejan, 1984, 1995).