Natural Convection in a Square Enclosure with a Conducting Rectangular Shape Positioned at Different Horizontal Locations

Abstract

Numerical simulations are carried out for natural convection in a square enclosure with a conducting horizontal rectangular cylinder. A two-dimensional solution for steady laminar natural convection flow is obtained by using finite-volume method for different Rayleigh numbers varying over the range of 10³ to 10⁶ and using water as the working fluid (Pr = 6.8). The study goes further to investigate the effect of the inner rectangular cylinder position and thermal conductivity ratio on the fluid flow and heat transfer in the cavity. The location of the inner rectangular cylinder is mainly changed horizontally and compared with respect to the vertical case. The effects of Rayleigh numbers, cylinder locations and thermal conductivity on the streamlines, isotherms and average heat transfer of the fluid inside the cavity are investigated. The results indicate that the flow field, temperature distribution, and average rate of the flow field inside the cavity are strongly dependent on the Rayleigh numbers, the position of the inner cylinder, and the thermal conductivity.