Natural convection heat transfer and entropy generation from a horizontal cylinder with baffles

The problem of laminar natural convection heat transfer from a horizontal cylinder with multiple, equally spaced, low conductivity baffles on its outer surface was investigated numerically. The effect of several combinations of number of baffles and baffle height on the average Nusselt number was studied over a wide range of Rayleigh numbers. The computed velocity and temperature fields were also used to calculate the local and global entropy generation for different cylinder diameters. The results showed that there was an optimal combination of a number of baffles and baffle height for minimum Nusselt number for a given value of the Rayleigh number. Short baffles slightly increased the Nusselt number at small values of the Rayleigh number. The global entropy generation increased monotonically with increasing Rayleigh number and decreased with increasing cylinder diameter, baffle height, and number of baffles.