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How to Estimate the Coefficient of Cooling

Coefficients of cooling, or heat transfer coefficients, measure the energy that can pass through material of a given area given a temperature difference between sides of the material. While many heat transfer coefficients can just be looked up in tables, such as for solid materials, the heat transfer coefficient for fluid flow depends on many factors and must be estimated.

Things You'll Need

Fluid dynamics textbook

Instructions

- 1
  Calculate if the fluid flow is laminar, transient or turbulent by determining the fluid's Reynolds number, which is the density times the velocity times the characteristic length divided by the dynamic viscosity.
- 2
  Calculate the Prandtl number by multiplying the dynamic viscosity times the specific heat capacity and then dividing by the thermal conductivity.
- 3
  Consult a fluid mechanics textbook to find the appropriate correlation for the Nusselt number, such as the Encyclopedia of Agricultural, Food and Biological Engineering.
- 4
  Multiply the Nusselt number by the thermal conductivity and then divide by the characteristic length to find the heat transfer coefficient.

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