Computational analysis of turbulent natural convection in water filled tall enclosure

Abstract EN

In this study, the turbulent buoyancy driven fluid flow and heat transfer in a differentially heated rectangular enclosure filled with water is quantified numerically.

The two dimensional governing differential equations are discretized using the finite volume method.

SIMPLE algorithm is employed to obtain stabilized solution for high Rayleigh numbers by a computational code written in FORTRAN language.

A parametric study is undertaken and the effect of Rayleigh numbers (1010 to 1014), the aspect ratio (30, 40 and 50), and the tilt angle (10o to 170o) on fluid flow and heat transfer are investigated.

The results of the adopted model in the present work are compared with previously published results and a qualitative agreement and a good validation is obtained.

Results show that the fluid circulation and temperature fields are strongly affected by the enclosure tilt angle and Rayleigh Number.