A study of free convection in air around horizontal cylinders of different diameters based on holographic interferometry. Temperature field equations and heat transfer coefficients

Abstract Holographic interferometry is used to study free convection in air around horizontal cylinders of different diameters and equal length, involving different surface temperatures, with the aim of defining the corresponding temperature fields. Interferograms were obtained to determine the temperature (T) of each point as well as its distance (x) from the surface of the cylinder. These values in turn made it possible to define functions (of an exponential nature in our case), T=f(x), that satisfactorily reproduced the temperature fields. Posteriorly, these functions were used to calculate the local convection coefficients, determining their dependency upon temperature and the direction…