Transient natural convection in rectangular enclosures heated from one side and cooled from above

Journal Article · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1999 · International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer

OSTI ID:328390

Aydin, O ^[1]

---

1. Karadeniz Technical Univ., Trabzon (Turkey). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Buoyancy-induced flows in enclosures play an important role in many engineering applications, such as heating and cooling of buildings, electronics cooling, solar energy collection systems, materials processing, energy storage systems, etc. Here, a numerical investigation into two-dimensional transient natural convection of single-phase fluids inside a completely filled square enclosure has been conducted for the Prandtl numbers of 0.71 and 7.1, and the Rayleigh number range 10{sup 3}--10{sup 7}. The fluid is assumed to be initially at a uniform temperature and motionless. Then, at time zero, the flow is driven by instantaneously raising and lowering the temperatures at the left side and the top wall, respectively. Adiabatic boundary conditions are used at the remaining walls. The unsteady Navier-Stokes equations, governing the flow under Boussinesq approximation, are solved with the vorticity-stream function formulation using the finite difference method. The development of the flow and temperature fields following these temperature changes are determined numerically. The transient behavior of the average Nusselt number at the hot wall is traced.

• OSTI ID: 328390
• Journal Information: International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer, Journal Name: International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 26; ISSN 0735-1933; ISSN IHMTDL
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD
NATURAL CONVECTION
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
NUSSELT NUMBER
SQUARE CONFIGURATION
TEMPERATURE GRADIENTS
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS