Temperature and velocity measurements in a buoyant flow induced by a heat source array on a vertical plate

Heat source arrays are common in engineering applications. Natural convection is a reliable and silent cooling strategy. Therefore, an array of flush-mounted heat sources has been studied under conjugate conduction and natural convection condition. This studies was performed for a system with relatively large dimensions, typical for power electronics, and a modified Rayleigh number up to 2·1010. A modular set of heaters was designed to vary the distribution of heat sources on the plate and investigate the influence of the spacing. Velocity and temperature were measured in the convective flow with particle image velocimetry and micro-thermocouple. The velocity field was analyzed with proper orthogonal decomposition. The first instabilities of the convective flows were described. The results gave a better understanding of the heat transfers in these configurations and are valuable for model validation.