Transport phenomena in a sidewall-moving bottom-heated cavity using heatlines

Abstract

The understanding of basic feature of energy transport from a heat source is important from the fundamental point of view as well as from various engineering and technological applications. To enrich the knowledge in this area, this paper presents energy transport phenomena from the heated bottom of an air-filled enclosure using heatfunction and heatlines. Both upward motion and downward motion of sidewalls and the alteration of cooling between sidewalls and top wall are considered, which yields four different cases. All the cases are investigated to identify the proper combination of wall motion and thermal condition for better thermal performance, considering different convection regimes. The highly nonlinear nature of flow is solved numerically using an in-house code, taking into account different speeds of wall motion and relative strength of buoyant flow and shear flow. The results reveal that the case with side cooling and downward translation of sidewalls performs maximum heat transfer compared with other cases. Higher speed of wall translation also causes higher heat transfer. Under natural convection regime, heat transfer is significantly high. Furthermore, the order of thermal mixing in a cavity is analysed and it is found that top cooling causes higher thermal mixing. To demonstrate the vortical flow structure in the cavity, streamfunction and streamlines are used. Evolutions of symmetric and asymmetric flow vortices with centre and saddle points and energy recirculation cells are found in the cavity.