Effect of partially thermally active wall on natural convection in porous enclosure

Abstract

A numerical investigation is presented to illustrate the impact of aspect ratio in a conjugate heat transfer enclosure filled with porous media and partially heated from vertical walls. The left and right walls are partially heated and cooled, respectively. The remaining partitions of the vertical walls in addition to the top and bottom walls are considered to be adiabatic. the present work is limited to two different cases: Top-Bottom (case 1) and Bottom-Top (case 2). The dimensionless Navier-Stokes governing equations are solved using the finite element method. The parameters of interest are the modified Rayleigh number 10 ≤ Ra ≤ 103, the finite wall thickness 0.02 ≤ D ≤ 0.5, 0.1 ≤ Kr ≤ 10 and the aspect ratio 0.5 ≤ A ≤ 10. The results are presented in term of streamlines, isotherms and average Nusselt number for fluid phase and along the solid hot wall. The results indicated that the locations of partially active walls have great influence on heat transfer rate. I was shown that Bottom-Top arrangement gives better heat transfer rate compared to that of Top-Bottom. It was also found that by increasing the Rayleigh number, the rate of heat transfer increased. In contrast, increasing the wall thickness and aspect ratio reduced the heat transfer rate.