Steady and transient liquid sphere heating in a convective gas stream

 A finite-difference scheme has been developed to solve the equations governing the laminar forced convection heat transfer around and inside a spherical fluid droplet moving steadily in another immiscible fluid for both steady and transient thermal conditions. For large values of the external flow Reynolds number (Re), results not available in the literature have been obtained for circulating droplets at intermediate and high interior-to-exterior viscosity ratios (μ^*). Detailed results over a wide range of viscosity ratio (μ^*) and for 200≤Re≤1000 are presented for the temperature profiles outside and inside the sphere, Nusselt number, the time required to attain a uniform surface temperature and the time required to reach the steady-state temperature. Results show that convective heating is dependent on the external flow Reynolds number (Re) and the interior-to-exterior viscosity ratio (μ^*) where increasing Re or decreasing μ^* result in increasing heat transfer rate convected to the liquid sphere. Received on 1 March 1999