Analysis of natural convection in a low gravity environment

Natural convection inside a spherical container was studied experimentally with two apparatuses at low buoyancy levels. The data generated by these experiments, plotted nondimensionally as the Nusselt versus Rayleigh numbers, give correlations for Rayleigh numbers between 1000 and 10 exp 8, a range previously untested. These results show that natural convection has significant effects at a Rayleigh number of 1000 and higher, although the behavior of the Nusselt number as the conduction limit is approached is still unknown for a spherical geometry.