Transport Processes and Separation Process Principles (Includes Unit Operations) Fourth Edition

4.14. DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS IN HEAT TRANSFER

4.14A. Introduction

As seen in many of the correlations for fluid flow and heat transfer, many dimensionless groups, such as the Reynolds number and Prandtl number, occur in these correlations. Dimensional analysis is often used to group the variables in a given physical situation into dimensionless parameters or numbers which can be useful in experimentation and correlating data.

An important way of obtaining these dimensionless groups is to use dimensional analysis of differential equations as described in Section 3.11. Another useful method is the Buckingham method, in which the listing of the significant variables in the particular physical problem is done first. Then we determine the number of ...