Numerical study of natural convection in a heated enclosure with two wavy vertical walls using finite element method

Abstract

The effects of wavy geometry on natural convection in an enclosure with two wavy vertical walls and filled with fluid saturated porous media are investigated numerically by using finite element method. The wavy enclosure is transformed to a unit square in the computational domain and the finite element formulations are solved in terms of ξ η -coordinate based on iterative method. In order to investigate the effects of interested parameters, the values of wave amplitude (λ = 0.05 and 0.1) and number of undulations (n = 1 and 2) are chosen with constants Ra = 105, Da = 10-3, and Pr = 0.71. It is found that the increase in number of undulations has small effect on natural convection inside the enclosure whereas the increase in wave amplitude reduces the strength of convection because higher wave volume plays a barricade role. © 2014 Pensiri Sompong and Supot Witayangkurn.