manufacturer of refrigerated transport containers develops a new product for moving frozen foods

by rail. It is a refrigerated container about 10 m long and 3 m high and narrow enough to fit on a
flatbed railcar. The interior is designed to maintain 10C conditions when the exterior conditions
are quiescent air at 40C. A reputable testing lab certifies that the container does indeed meet the
design specifications. The walls of the container have urethane foam insulation (k 0.02 W/m K)
with a thickness of about 10 cm. Before placing an order for several of the containers, a railroad
executive poses the following question to the manufacturers sales representative: Your testing
lab has certified performance under quiescent air conditions, but what about the performance when
the train is moving at a speed of 60 mi/h (27 m/s)? Will it be able to handle the increased heat load
of the high-speed hot air?
Solution
Most manufacturers sales representatives would be unable to answer the executives question on
the spot, and would immediately seek help from the appropriate engineering group at the home
office. While a heat-transfer expert at the home office could probably give a quick answer to
the question, it would be prudent to back up the answer with calculations, because a large order
is at stake.
There are three main thermal resistances for the container wall: (1) internal convection resistance, (2) conduction
resistance through the urethane foam, and (3) convection resistance on the
outside of the container. (We ignore any resistance of the metal sheath on the interior and exterior
because they are negligible compared to the foam insulation.) The thermal resistance of the foam,
on a unit-area basis is
Rfoam =
x
k
=
0.1
0.02
=5
Whatever the convection coefficient may be on the inside of the container, we assume it does not
change when the railcar is in motion or sitting still. When in motion at 60 mi/h, the flow over the
outside of the container approximates that of flow over a 10-m-long flat plate. When stopped,
the flow approximates that of free-convection on a 3-m-high vertical flat plate. Thus, the crux of
the problem is a comparison of the values of the convection coefficients for these two conditions.
First, consider the quiescent, free-convection situation. For a 3-m-high plate the value of Grx will
most certainly be > 109 (see Figure 12-11), and we may therefore use a simplified relation of
Table 7-2 to estimate the value of h. Assuming a value of T 10C, we obtain