Effects of cavity and heat source aspect ratios on natural convection of a nanofluid in a C-shaped cavity using Lattice Boltzmann method

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider natural convection of a nanofluid inside of a C-shaped cavity using Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM).

Design/methodology/approach

Effects of some geometry and flow parameters consisting of the aspect ratio of the cavity, aspect ratio of the heat source; Rayleigh number (Ra = 10³ − 10⁶) have been investigated. The validity of the method is checked by comparing the present results with ones from the previously published work.

Findings

The results demonstrate that for Ra = 10³, the aspect ratio of the heat source has more influence on the average Nusselt number in contrast to the case of Ra = 10⁶. Contrary to the fact that the average Nusselt number increases non-linearly more than twice because of the increase of the aspect ratio of the enclosure at Ra = 10³, the average Nusselt number has a linear relation with the aspect ratio for of Ra = 10⁶. Therefore, upon increasing the Rayleigh number, the efficiency of the aspect ratio of the cavity on the thermal convection, gradually diminishes.

Originality/value

The authors believe that all the results, both numerical and asymptotic, are original and have not been published elsewhere.

Citation

Izadi, M., Mohebbi, R., Chamkha, A. and Pop, I. (2018), "Effects of cavity and heat source aspect ratios on natural convection of a nanofluid in a C-shaped cavity using Lattice Boltzmann method", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 28 No. 8, pp. 1930-1955. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-03-2018-0110