Effect of PR on the development of upward laminar mixed convection in the entrance region of vertical quarter circle ducts

Upward laminar mixed convection in the entrance region for vertical quarter circle ducts is investigated theoretically. The governing momentum and energy equations are solved numerically using a marching technique with finite control volume approach following the SIMPLER algorithm. Results are obtained for the thermal boundary condition of uniform heat input axially with uniform wall temperature circumferentially at any cross section (H1 boundary condition) with Pr = 7.0 and 0.7 which corresponds to water and air respectively, Re = 500 and wide range of Grashof numbers. These results include the velocity and temperature distributions, at different axial locations, axial distribution of local Nusselt number and local average wall friction factor. It is found that the local Nusselt number follows the expected behavior of monotonic decrease along the developing region down to the fully developed region. However, the axial development of the local friction factor follows a different trend than that of local Nusselt number. The effect of Grashof number is to increase the values of local Nusselt number and friction factor in the developing and fully developed regions. The effect of Pr is mainly in the entrance region where the values of Nusselt number and friction factor corresponding to air are higher than those of water; however, the flow in the fully developed region is independent of Pr.