Experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer from a heated horizontal cylinder rotating in still air around its axis

In the present paper, the experimental system under consideration is a rotating cylinder of 50 mm diameter placed in still air. The numerical calculations are carried out by using a finite volume method based computational fluid dynamics solver FLUENT. The results of the heat transfer are characterized in terms of the non-dimensional parameters: Nusselt number (Nu), Reynolds number (Re), and Grashof number (Gr). The experimental measurements are carried out for Reynolds number range of 1880–6220 and Grashof numbers range of 14,285–714,285, while the numerical calculations are carried out for Reynolds number range of 0–100,000 and Grashof numbers range of 100–1,000,000. The effects of rotation on the heat transfer characteristics are presented in terms of the isotherm patterns, streamlines, local and the average Nusselt numbers. The results correlated as: Nu = 0.022Re0.821 which compares very well with the data available for air in published works.