Natural convection in a linearly heated vertical porous annulus

Abstract

The study reports influence of linear thermal conditions on buoyancy driven convection in an upright porous annular space, in which inner cylinder is linearly heated while the outer cylinder is maintained at uniform or non-uniform thermal condition. However, top boundary is insulated and bottom boundary is uniformly cooled. Using the finite difference based ADI scheme, the model equations are numerically solved to predict the flow and thermal patterns as well as the corresponding thermal transport rates from the heated boundaries. Nonuniform heating of inner and outer cylinders induces multicellular flow and hence increases the thermal transport. Among the heated boundaries, thermal transport from the bottom wall is more for case (II). In general, the heat dissipation from the boundaries are higher for case (II) as compared to case (I), and the presence of porosity reduces heat transport rate.