Abstract
This paper discusses the thermal behavior of a high pressure mercury lamp in a horizontal position, compared with that of a vertical lamp. The model adopted is three-dimensional, steady, and powered DC. After the model validation, we analyzed temperature fields and velocities for the case of the lamp in a horizontal position by comparing it with those of a lamp in vertical position. This setting initially fixed the wall temperature equal to 1000 K. However, the morphology of the temperature profile in the case of the horizontal lamp indicates that the temperature of the wall cannot be uniform. Thus, we have, in a second time, performed an energy balance at the wall to calculate its temperature. This aims to understand the influence of convection on the thermal properties of the source. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3598447]