Determination of Convective Heat Flux on Steady-State Heat Transfer Surfaces with Arbitrarily Specified Boundaries

. The present study focuses on the high-resolution determination of local heat flux distributions encountered in forced convection heat transfer studies. The specific method results in an uncertainty level less than 4 percent of the heat transfer coeffi-cient on surfaces with arbitrarily defined geometric boundaries. Heat transfer sur-faces constructed for use in steady-state chniques typically use rectangular thin foil electric heaters to generate a constant heat flux boundary condition. There are also past studies dealing with geometrically complex heating elements. Past studies have either omitted the nonuniform heat flux regions or applied correctional techniques that are approximate. The current study combines electric field theory and a finite element method to solve directly for a nonun~orm surface heat flux distribution due to the specific shape of the heater boundary. Heat generation per unit volume of the surface heater element in the Jbrm of local Joule heating is accurately calculated using a finite element technique. The technique is shown to be applicable to many complex convective heat transfer configurations. These configurations often have complex geometric boundaries such as turbine endwall platforms, surfaces disturbe