Study of the Flow Around a Heated Cylinder in Mixed Convection Regime

Overhead Lines (OHL) are a key component to transmit and distribute electrical energy. The aero-thermal design of OHL is generally carried out considering the cable as a perfect heated cylinder immersed in a uniform cross flow (IEEE standard for calculating the current-temperature relationship of bare overhead conductors, 2013, [1]). Moreover, The design also assumes that only two regimes can occur, depending on the Reynolds number (based on the line diameter and the incoming velocity): (a) natural convection for low velocities, e.g. below a wind speed of 0.6 m/s which roughly corresponds to a Reynolds number of 850; (b) forced convection at higher Reynolds numbers. In both of these cases analytical correlations exist to compute the Nusselt number.