Natural convection heat transfer from a horizontal cylinder using holographic interferometry

Abstract The natural convection heat transfer from a horizontal cylinder with a uniform wall temperature in an infinite space was experimentally investigated. Infinite fringe interferograms of the cylinder heated from 295.15 to 355.15 K were recorded using the holographic interferometry technique. The temperature field around the cylinder was reconstructed based on phase difference recovery using a MATLAB code. The distributions of the local and average Nusselt numbers over the cylinder were then obtained. A correlation of the average Nusselt number was proposed for a Rayleigh number range of 2.7–6.0 × 10 4 . The experimental results are in good agreement with previous correlations, with a deviation of ±10%. The holographic interferometry technique was found to be satisfactory and reliable for heat transfer analyses.