Thermal interaction between laminar film condensation and forced convection along a conducting wall

Summary A theoretical analysis is presented to investigate the thermal interaction between laminar film condensation of a saturated vapor and a forced convection system separated by a heat conducting wall. In this work, the effect of the wall thermal resistance is considered. It is assumed that the countercurrent boundary layer flow is formed on the two sides. Governing boundary layer equations together with their corresponding boundary conditions for film condensation and forced convection are all cast into dimensionless forms by using the non-similarity transformation. The resulting system of equations is solved by using the local non-similarity method in conjunction with the fourth order Runge-Kutta method in conjunction with the Nachtsheim-Swigert iteration scheme. The total heat flux through the wall and the wall temperature distribution are determined. The present results show that the effect of the forced convection Prandtl number Pr _c is not negligible for large values of the thermal resistance ratioA ^*, and the effect ofA ^* and Pr _c on the overall heat transfer through the wall is more pronounced than that of the Jakob number and film Prandtl number.