Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of free stream turbulence intensity on the heat transfer from a flat surface. An analogy between conduction and convection is used by applying the simplified time-averaged turbulent energy equation to treat the problem. The emphasis is placed on explaining how free stream fluctuations affect the heat transfer rate. The effect of parameters such as the direction of temperature gradient, different flow regimes, and fluid types is discussed The approach taken in this work can be regarded as a rule of thumb to predict the heat transfer from/to a flat plate adjacent to a laminar or turbulent stream. The introduced method leads to the results in agreement with previous works. Some of the flow conditions considered in this work have not yet been investigated in the literature.

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