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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of complex boundary conditions on natural convection of a yield stress fluid in a square enclosure heated from below (uniformly and non-uniformly) and symmetrically cooled from the sides.

The governing equations are solved numerically subject to continuous and discontinuous Dirichlet boundary conditions by Galerkin’s weighted residuals scheme of finite element method and using a non-uniform unstructured triangular grid.

Results show that the overall heat transfer from the heated wall decreases in the case of non-uniform heating for both Newtonian and yield stress fluids. It is found that the effect of yield stress on heat transfer is almost similar in both uniform and non-uniform heating cases. The yield stress has a stabilizing effect, reducing the convection intensity in both cases. Above a certain value of yield number Y, heat transfer is only due to conduction. It is found that a transition of different modes of stability may occur as Rayleigh number changes; this fact gives rise to a discontinuity in the variation of critical yield number.

Besides the new numerical method based on the finite element and using a non-uniform unstructured grid for analyzing natural convection of viscoplastic materials with complex boundary conditions, the originality of the present work concerns the treatment of the yield stress fluids under the influence of complex boundary conditions.