Effectiveness of several turbulence models in natural convection
International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow
ISSN: 0961-5539
Article publication date: 1 July 2004
Abstract
Heat transfer due to natural convection inside a closed cavity must be modeled to include the effects of turbulence if the Rayleigh number is sufficiently large. This study assesses the performance of several commonly used numerical turbulence models such as k‐ε, Renormalized Group k‐ε and Reynolds stress model, in predicting heat transfer due to natural convection inside an air‐filled cubic cavity. The cavity is maintained at 307 K on one side and 300 K on the opposite side with a linear temperature variation between these values on the remaining walls. Two cases are considered, one in which the heated side is vertical, and the other in which it is inclined at 45° from the horizontal. Rayleigh numbers of 107, 108, 109 and 1010 are considered. Results of the three turbulence models are compared to experimentally determined values or values from correlations. It was found that the standard k‐ε model was the most effective model in terms of accuracy and computational economy.
Keywords
Citation
Walsh, P.C. and Leong, W.H. (2004), "Effectiveness of several turbulence models in natural convection", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 633-648. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615530410539955
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited