Open Access

ARTICLE

LAMINAR NATURAL CONVECTION STUDY IN A QUADRANTAL CAVITY USING HEATER ON ADJACENT WALLS

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Mechanical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Agartala , Tripura, 799055, India

* Corresponding Author: Email:

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2013, 4(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.v4.1.3005

Abstract

A numerical analysis of laminar natural convection in a quadrantal cavity filled with water having variable length heaters attached on the adjacent walls have been made to examine heat and fluid flow. Numerical solutions are obtained using a commercial computational fluid dynamics package, FLUENT, using the finite volume method. Effects of the Rayleigh number, Ra, on the Nusselt number, Nu, as well as velocity and temperature fields are investigated for the range of Ra from 10³ to 10⁷ . Computations were carried out for the non-dimensional heater lengths on the vertical wall (m=0.2, 0.4 and 0.6) and horizontal wall (n=0.2, 0.4 and 0.6). It is observed that heat transfer increases with increase in Rayleigh number and the flow strength increases with increase in size of heater on the vertical wall compared to the bottom wall and temperature fields are also affected. In contrast, with increase in size of heater on both side of adjacent walls flow strength does not changes significantly

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Keywords

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