Laminar natural convection inside a square enclosure around isothermal horizontal and vertical triangular partitions

Abstract EN

Two dimensional laminar natural convection heat transfers in a square cavity with horizontal and vertical triangular partitions are studied by ANSYS 12.1.

The computational procedure based on finite element technique is used to solve equations of continuity, momentum and energy.

Two isothermal boundary conditions are considered.

The segments of horizontal and vertical walls of the enclosure are maintained at hot temperature, while the triangular partitions surfaces are maintained at cold temperature.

Air was chosen as a working fluid with Prandtl number of 0.71.

A parametric study is carried out using following parameters: Grashof number from 104 to 106, Dimensionless partition height from 0.2l to 0.8l of half height or width of the enclosure.

Representative result illustrating the effect of the above parameters on the contours maps of the streamlines and isotherms are reported and discussed.

It was found that, the convective heat transfer is greatly influenced by increasing the partitions height.

Increasing the partition height causes an increase in heat transfer due to increasing cold surfaces, vise verse, causes decreases in the Nusselt number due to decrease in the flow speed.