Effect of insulated/uninsulated channel walls on heat transfer from a horizontal finned tube in a vertical channel

Measurements were made of the combined natural convection and radiation heat transfer from a horizontal finned tube situated in a vertical channel open at the top and bottom. In one set of experiments, both walls of the channel were heavily insulated, while in a second set of experiments, one of the insulated walls was replaced by an uninsulated metallic sheet. In general, the heat transfer coefficients were found to be lower with the metal wall in place, but only moderately. With the finned tube situated at the bottom of the channel, the differences in the heat transfer coefficients corresponding to the two types of walls were only a few percent. When the tube was positioned at the mid-height of the channel, larger differences were encountered, but in the practical range of Rayleigh numbers, the differences did not exceed 5 percent.