Prediction of natural convection heat transfer in complex partitions cavity

Abstract EN

A numerical investigation has been carried out to examine the effects of insulated baffle mounted in complex cavity representing as an industrial building on flow pattern and heat transfer characteristics.

The cavity is formed by adiabatic horizontal bottom, inclined upper walls and vertical isothermal walls.

This problem is solved by using flow-energy equations in terms of stream-vortices formulation in curvilinear coordinates.

Two cases are considered ; in the first (case 1) the insulated baffle position attached to the horizontal bottom wall of the cavity while in the second case (case 2) the insulated baffle position attached the upper inclined wall.

A parametric study is carried out using following parameters : Rayleigh number from 103 to 106, Prandtl number for 0.7 and 10, baffle height (HB = 0, 0.3H*, 0.4H*, and 0.5H*), baffle location for (LB = 0.25L and 0.75L) with or without baffle in the cavity (total of 100 tests).

For case 1 results show that, the flow strength generally increasing with increasing Ra values, increasing baffle height, and decreasing values of Pr, while in case 2 the same behavior of above could be show except the flow strength decreasing with increasing baffle height, also, increase Ra leads to increase the rate of heat transfer.

The configuration of the cavity in case 2 leads to increase in heat transfer rate comparing with that in case 1.