Natural convection along vertical surfaces occurs in the oil filled caverns in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). These caverns are located in large salt domes where the geothermal temperature difference over the cavern height of up to 2000 feet can be 30/degree/F with the hotter salt at the bottom of the cavern. Due to the coupling of the heat transfer between the salt and the fluids in the cavern, heat transfer to the oil and the resulting natural convection can occur during the entire anticipated storage period of up to 30 years. The wall and fluid conditions are spatially nonuniform due to the geothermal temperature difference and fluid temperature stratification. The Modified Local Similarity (MLS) method has been developed and applied to natural convection along a vertical flat plate with variable surface conditions and temperature stratification for application to natural convection in SPR caverns. The MLS method explicitly conserves energy along the plate. The boundary layer velocity and temperature profiles are evaluated by the local similarity method with appropriate values of the similarity parameters. The MLS method is a significant improvement to the local similarity approach and is a useful approximate tool for analyzing natural convection on vertical surfaces for nonsimilar conditions. 22 refs., 33 figs. (ERA citation 14:027867)
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