Natural convection heat transfer in an enclosure with a partition; A finite-element analysis

Journal Article · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1992 · Numerical Heat Transfer. Part A, Applications; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/10407789108944874· OSTI ID:5496422

Ghosh, P K; Sarkar, A ^[1]; Sastri, V M.K. ^[2]

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1. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur Univ., Calcutta 700 032 (IN)
2. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Inst. of Technology, Madras 600 036 (IN)

Natural convection in enclosures is an area of keen interest to research. Applications include thermal design of buildings, cryogenic storage, and solar collector design. The configurations that are most widely studied in the literature involve a square cavity with differentially heated sidewalls and a cavity heated from below. Of late, however, the effects of different boundary conditions as well as varied aspect ratios and inclinations have also been investigated. The motivation stems from the thermal design of buildings, and efforts are being made to ascertain the amount of leakage of heat through the building walls. Considerable understanding of the flow and heat transfer phenomena are also necessary, since the buoyancy effects arise due to temperature differences existing between various parts of the building. This paper reports that laminar natural convection in rectangular enclosures divided by a single thin partition is studied numerically by the finite-element method. Special emphasis is given to enclosures with aspect ratios less than 1, although the results for aspect ratios of 1 have also been reported for comparison.

• OSTI ID: 5496422
• Journal Information: Numerical Heat Transfer. Part A, Applications; (United States), Journal Name: Numerical Heat Transfer. Part A, Applications; (United States) Vol. 21:2; ISSN 1040-7782; ISSN NHAAE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
141000 -- Solar Collectors & Concentrators
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
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42 ENGINEERING
420400* -- Engineering-- Heat Transfer & Fluid Flow
661210 -- Cryogenics-- (1992-)
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BUILDINGS
CALCULATION METHODS
CONVECTION
CRYOGENIC STORAGE DEVICES
DESIGN
ENERGY TRANSFER
EQUIPMENT
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
HEAT TRANSFER
MASS TRANSFER
MEMORY DEVICES
NATURAL CONVECTION
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
SOLAR COLLECTORS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT