Numerical study of air convection in a rectangular enclosure with two isothermal blocks and oscillating bottom wall temperature

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to perform a numerical study of air convection in a rectangular enclosure with two isothermal blocks and oscillating bottom wall temperature under laminar flow conditions. The geometry of the enclosure contains two isothermal blocks placed equidistant along the streamwise direction. The top wall is assumed to be cold (low temperature). The bottom wall temperature is either kept as constant or sinusoidally varied with time. The vertical walls are considered as adiabatic. The flow is diagonally upwards and assisted by the buoyancy force. The inlet is positioned at the bottom of the left wall, and the outlet is placed at the top of the right wall. The parameters considered in this paper are Rayleigh number (104-106), Prantdl number (0.71), amplitude of temperature oscillation (0-0.5) and the period (0.2). The effects of these parameters on heat transfer and fluid flow inside the open cavity are studied. The periodic results of fluid flow are illustrated with streamlines and the heat transfer is represented by isotherms and time-averaged Nusselt number. By virtue of increasing buoyancy, the heat transfer accelerates with an increase in the Rayleigh number. Also, the heat transfer is intensive with an increase in the bottom wall temperature.

Design/methodology/approach

The momentum and energy equations are solved simultaneously. The energy equation (3) is initially solved using the alternating direction implicit (ADI) method. The results of the energy equation are updated into the vorticity equation. The unsteady vorticity transport equation is also solved using the ADI method. Dimensionless time step equal to 0.01 is used for high Ra (10⁵ and 10⁶) and 0.001 is used for low Ra (10⁴). Convergence criteria of 10⁻⁵ is used during the vorticity, stream function and temperature calculations, as the sum of error should be very small.

Findings

Numerical study of air convection in a rectangular enclosure with two isothermal blocks and oscillating bottom wall temperature is performed under laminar flow condition. The effect of the isothermal blocks on the heat transfer is analyzed for different Rayleigh numbers and the following conclusions are arrived. The hydrodynamic blockage effect is subdued by the isothermal heating of square blocks. Based on the streamline diagrams, it is found that the formation of vortices is greatly influenced by the Rayleigh number when all the walls are exposed to a constant wall temperature. The influence of amplitude on the heat transfer is remarkable on the wall exposed to oscillating temperature and is subtle on the opposite static cold wall. The heat transfer increases with an increase in the Rayleigh number and temperature.

Research limitations/implications

Flow is assumed to be two-dimensional and laminar subject to oscillatory boundary condition. The present investigation aims to study natural convection inside the cavity filled with air whose bottom wall is subject to time-variant temperature. The buoyancy is further intensified through two isothermal square blocks placed equidistant along the streamwise direction at mid-height.

Originality/value

The authors have developed a CFD solver to simulate the situation. Effect of Rayleigh number subject to oscillatory thermal boundary condition is simulated. Streamline contour and isotherm contour are presented. Local and average Nusselt numbers are presented.

Citation

K., K., Velkennedy, R., Taler, J., Taler, D., Oclon, P. and P., R.K. (2018), "Numerical study of air convection in a rectangular enclosure with two isothermal blocks and oscillating bottom wall temperature", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 103-117. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-03-2017-0125