Review of experimental investigations of liquid-metal heat transfer

Experimental data of various investigators of liquid-metal heat-transfer characteristics were reevaluated using as consistent assumptions and methods as possible and then compared with each other and with theoretical results. The reevaluated data for both local fully developed and average Nusselt numbers in the turbulent flow region were found still to have considerable spread, with the bulk of the data being lower than predicted by existing analysis. An equation based on empirical grounds which represents most of the fully developed heat-transfer data is nu = 0.625 pe(0.4) where nu represents the Nusselt number and pe the Peclet number. The theoretical prediction of the heat transfer in the entrance region was found to give lower values, in most cases, than those found in the experimental work.