Thermosolutal natural convection in a partly porous cavity with sinusoidal wall heating and cooling
International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow
ISSN: 0961-5539
Article publication date: 28 July 2021
Issue publication date: 20 January 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to consider numerical analysis of laminar double-diffusive natural convection inside a non-homogeneous closed medium composed of a saturated porous matrix and a clear binary fluid under spatial sinusoidal heating/cooling on one side wall and uniform salting.
Design/methodology/approach
The domain of interest is a partially square porous enclosure with sinusoidal wall heating and cooling. The fluid flow, heat and mass transfer dimensionless governing equations associated with the corresponding boundary conditions are discretized using the finite volume method. The resulting algebraic equations are solved by an in-house FORTRAN code and the SIMPLE algorithm to handle the non-linear character of conservation equations. The validity of the in-house FORTRAN code is checked by comparing the current results with previously published experimental and numerical works. The effect of the porous layer thickness, the spatial frequency of heating and cooling, the Darcy number, the Rayleigh number and the porous to fluid thermal conductivity ratio is analyzed.
Findings
The results demonstrate that for high values of the spatial frequency of heating and cooling (f = 7), temperature contours show periodic variations with positive and negative values providing higher temperature gradient near the thermally active wall. In this case, the temperature variation is mainly in the porous layer, while the temperature of the clear fluid region is practically the same as that imposed on the left vertical wall. This aspect can have a beneficial impact on thermal insulation. Besides, the porous to fluid thermal conductivity ratio,
Practical implications
The findings are useful for devices working on double-diffusive natural convection inside non-homogenous cavities.
Originality/value
The authors believe that the presented results are original and have not been published elsewhere.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the financial assistance received from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research grant as part of a research project under the code: B00L02UN250120200001.
Citation
Omara, A., Touiker, M. and Bourouis, A. (2022), "Thermosolutal natural convection in a partly porous cavity with sinusoidal wall heating and cooling", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 1115-1144. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-01-2021-0062
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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