32nd UIT (Italian Union of Thermo-fluid-dynamics) Heat Transfer Conference

The annual Conference of the ''Unione Italiana di Termofluidodinamica'' (UIT) aims to promote cooperation in the field of heat transfer and thermal sciences by bringing together scientists and engineers working in related areas.

The 32nd UIT Conference was held in Pisa, from the 23rd to the 25th of June, 2014 in the buildings of the School of Engineering, just a few months after the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first Institution of the School of Engineering at the University of Pisa.

The response was very good, with more than 100 participants and 80 high-quality contributions from 208 authors on seven different heat transfer related topics: Heat transfer and efficiency in energy systems, environmental technologies, and buildings (25 papers); Micro and nano scale thermo–fluid dynamics (9 papers); Multi–phase fluid dynamics, heat transfer and interface phenomena (14 papers); Computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer (10 papers); Heat transfer in nuclear plants (8 papers); Natural, forced and mixed convection (10 papers) and Conduction and radiation (4 papers).

To encourage the debate, the Conference Program scheduled 16 oral sessions (44 papers), three ample poster sessions (36 papers) and four invited lectures given by experts in the various fields both from Industry and from University. Keynote Lectures were given by Dr. Roberto Parri (ENEL, Italy), Prof. Peter Stephan (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Prof. Bruno Panella (Politecnico di Torino), and Prof. Sara Rainieri (Universit;aacute; di Parma).

This special volume collects a selection of the scientific contributions discussed during this conference. A total of 46 contributions, two keynote lectures and 44 papers both from oral and poster sessions, have been selected for publication in this special issue, after a second accurate revision process. These works give a good overview of the state of the art of Italian research in the field of Heat Transfer related topics at the date.

The editors of the volume would like to sincerely thank the authors for presenting their works at the conference and in this special issue. Special thanks are also due to the Scientific Committee, to all the reviewers, and to all the authors for their accurate revision process of each paper for this special issue. Special thanks go to the Organizing Committee, chaired by Prof. Paolo Di Marco.

Walter Grassi (Chairman of the Scientific Committee), Alessandro Franco, Nicola Forgione, Daniele Testi – Editors of the Special Issue