Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical Investigation of Fluid and Thermal Flow in a Differentially Heated Side Enclosure Walls at Various Inclination Angles

by C.S. Nor Azwadi¹, N.I.N. Izual²

1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
2 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2012, 84(6), 559-574. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2012.084.559

Abstract

Natural convection in a differentially heated enclosure plays vital role in engineering applications such as nuclear reactor, electronic cooling technologies, roof ventilation, etc. The developed thermal flow patterns induced by the density difference are expected to be critically dependence on the inclination angles of the cavity. Hence, thermal and fluid flow pattern inside a differentially heated side enclosure walls with various inclination angles have been investigated numerically using the mesoscale lattice Boltzmann scheme. Three different dimensionless Rayleigh numbers were used, and a dimensionless Prandtl number of 0.71 was set to simulate the circulation of air in the system. It was found that the number, size and shape of the vortices in the enclosure were significantly affected by the Rayleigh number and inclination angle of the enclosure. The plots of temperature lines and the average Nusselt number in the enclosure clearly depict the temperature distribution as a function of Rayleigh number and inclination angles.

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