Natural Convection in a Porous Cavity Filled with Nanofluid in the Presence of Isothermal Corrugated Source

Abstract

The present paper is focused on the study of natural convection in a porous square cavity saturated by a nanofluid (Al2O3-Water) in the presence of a corrugated heat source. The horizontal walls and the hatched parts of the vertical walls are considered adiabatic. The corrugated portions of the vertical walls are maintained at uniform and constant temperatures. The basic equations describing the natural convection flow consist of mass conservation, Darcy-Brinkman and energy were solved by means of finite element method. For the physical parameters of (Al2O3-water) nanofluid, we use the Brinkman and Maxwell models. The results are presented as isotherms, streamlines, average Nusselt number, velocity and temperature profiles for various combinations of Modified Rayleigh number, volume fraction of nanoparticles, amplitude and both sources position. It is found that the heat transfer increases with the increase of Modified Rayleigh number, volume fraction and amplitude. The hot source is at the bottom and the cold source is at the top is the optimal position of the two sources to evacuate better the convection heat transfer.