The effect of sidewalls on heat transfer characteristics of a three-dimensional turbulent heated wall jet is studied. The sidewall is defined as the two plates parallel to the symmetry plane along the downstream direction. The sidewall enclosure (hereafter 'SWE') width is varied from 140mm to 200mm. The enclosure length (= 1000mm) and height(= 400mm) are kept constant for all the conditions. Air is slightly heated (ΔT = (t_jet − t_o) = 20°C) from the ambient condition. A developing jet exit velocity profile, generated by a 200 mm long square (height = 20 ± 0.5mm) nozzle, is used to characterise the SWE effect. Based on the mean bulk velocity and nozzle height, the Reynolds number is 25,000 for all the sidewall enclosures. The temperature distribution inside the SWE is measured with the fine wire K-type thermocouple. The initial velocity profile at the nozzle exit is measured with the single probe hot wire anemometer. The temperature is measured in the lateral and wall-normal planes at different downstream locations in the range of 0.2 < x/h < 45.
The effect of SWE on the three-dimensional wall jet is characteristic of the temperature distribution in lateral and wall-normal directions. The Bottom wall temperature decay is also presented. The spread of the flow stream is presented in the spread ratio form to understand the sidewall effect on the flow domain.