Numerical study of forced convective heat transfer around a spherical aerostat

Forced convective heat transfer is one of the major factors that dominate the thermal behaviors of aerostats. Due to the large physical size, the convection around an aerostat has high Reynolds numbers. The existing forced convective heat transfer correlations are limited to the Reynolds number lower than 105, which are not appropriate for aerostat applications. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain a convective heat transfer correlation applicable to spherical aerostats at high Reynolds numbers. In this paper, steady convective heat transfer from an isothermal spherical aerostat is numerically investigated. The numerical simulation is carried out by commercial computational fluid dynamic software with the Reynolds number from 20 to 108. The average Nusselt numbers are obtained and compared with those of available in literature. Based on regression and optimization with software, a new piecewise correlation of Nusselt number is proposed. The verification shows that the new correlation is reliable.