In March 2017 the roughness of the aluminum plate was reduced from 3mm to 1mm. I installed it in the wind-tunnel and started running experiments. The forced convection measurements were nearly 30% higher than expected!
I examined nearly every aspect of the physical device and its mathematical model. The fan-speed calibration was found to be sensitive to the distance between the test surface and the wind-tunnel wall. Conditioning the rpm-to-speed conversion on the plate's orientation improved the earlier data taken with the plate with 3mm roughness.
When the plate is not parallel to the wind-tunnel, the forced and mixed measurements are affected. With the 3mm roughness plate, the alignment had been controlled within a couple of millimeters over the plate's 305mm length. The 1mm roughness plate seemed to require stricter tolerances. Using a caliper, I am able to control the alignment to better than 1mm.
The primary cause of the measured excess was that, when the height of the posts had been reduced, the size and spacing of the posts had not been reduced. At high wind-speeds the convection from the flat post tops was exceeding the "fully-rough" mode of convection. The model incorporating this phenomena is developed in the "Rough to Smooth Turbulence Transition" section of my "Mixed Convection from an Isothermal Rough Plate" paper.
Writing a paper forces one to revisit all the questions and anomalies that occurred during research and experiment. Understanding, resolving, and testing all of these issues has taken months. I would appreciate any proof-reading or critiquing that others might provide before I submit it for publication.
