Laminar Natural Convection About Downward Facing Heated Blunt Bodies to Liquid Metals

The laminar boundary layer equations for free convection over bodies of arbitrary shape (i.e., a three-term series expansion) and with arbitrary surface heat flux or surface temperature are solved in local Cartesian coordinates. Both two-dimensional bodies (e.g., horizontal cylinders) and axisymmetric bodies (e.g., spheres) with finite radii of curvature at their stagnation points are considered. A Blasius series expansion is applied to convert from partial to ordinary differential equations. An additional transformation removes the surface shape dependence and the surface heat flux or surface temperature dependence of the equations. A second-order-correct, finite-difference method is used to solve the resulting equations. Tables of results for low Prandtl numbers are presented, from which local Nusselt numbers can be computed.