Natural convection in an inclined enclosure

Abstract

The effect of inclination on laminar natural convection in a square cavity is studied numerically for inclination angles ranging from 40° to 160°, Rayleigh numbers between 10³ and 10⁶ and Prandtl numbers from 0.02 to 4,000. Contours of stream functions and temperature are presented in order to provide a new insight and a better understanding of the flow and heat transfer characteristics in a square cavity. Finds computed local and mean Nusselt numbers at the hot wall in satisfactory agreement with experimental and other numerical results. Finds the mean heat flux at the hot wall as well as the distribution of the local heat flux along the heated wall are found to depend on the inclination angle, the Rayleigh number and the Prandtl number. Such a dependence is significant for angles greater than 90°, while for smaller angles the effect of the inclination angle on the Nusselt‐Rayleigh correlation is weaker.

Citation

Rasoul, J. and Prinos, P. (1997), "Natural convection in an inclined enclosure", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 7 No. 5, pp. 438-478. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615539710187783