Effect of Power-Law Fluid Behavior on Nusselt Number of a Circular Disk in the Forced Convection Regime

Forced convection heat transfer is investigated from a thin disk in power-law fluids over wide range of conditions such as: Reynolds number, 1 ≤ Re ≤ 100, Prandtl number, 1 ≤ Pr ≤ 100, power-law index, 0.4 ≤ n ≤ 1.8, and disk thickness to diameter ratio, t/D = 0.01, 0.025, 0.05, and 0.075. The wide range of values of the power-law index spanned here covers both shear-thinning as well as shear-thickening fluid behavior. These results also elucidate the influence of the type of thermal boundary conditions, i.e., constant wall temperature condition (CWT) and constant heat flux condition (CHF) prescribed on the disk surface. Extensive results are presented in terms of the local and average Nusselt numbers to delineate the effect of each of the influencing parameters, Re, Pr, n, t/D for each thermal boundary condition. Limited results are also included here at vanishingly small values of the Peclet number to understand the behavior in the creeping flow condition. Finally, the present numerical results on the average Nusselt number have been consolidated in the form of a predictive equation to facilitate the interpolation of the present data for intermediate values of the parameters and/or a priori estimation of the average Nusselt number in a new application.