The impacts of wind speed, wind incident angle and cavity tilt angle on combined natural-forced convective heat loss of a fully open cylindrical cavity with constant heat flux were performed experimentally. Uncertainty analysis, temperature distribution on the bottom and side surfaces, the variation of the combined natural-forced convective heat loss Nusselt number Nu, with studied parameters were presented. The general and improved models for predicting the combined convective heat loss in cavity for engineering applications were provided. The results show that the temperature distributions on the bottom and side surfaces in the wind condition are not the same as those in the no-wind condition. The critical wind speed for minimizing the combined convective heat loss does not appear in the investigated range of the wind speed. Increasing the wind speed can weaken the effect of wind incident angle. The impact of cavity tilt angle becomes quite complicated due to the introduction of wind, implying that the wind condition should be considered when analyzing the influence of cavity tilt angle. Besides, the improved model has superior performance than the general model ascribing to the fact that some inherent physical mechanisms are considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.