NATURAL CONVECTION HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT IN AIR FILLED RECTANGULAR ENCLOSURES WITH PORTIRIONS

Abstract

Natural convection of an air filled partitioned rectangular enclosure is studied numerically. Top and bottom of the enclosure are adiabatic; the two vertical walls are isothermal. Two perfectly insulated baffles were attached to its horizontal walls at symmetric position. The flow is assumed to be two-dimensional. The discretized equations were solved by finite volume method.The study was performed for different values of Rayleigh numbers Ra ( ), baffles length and position ( )(0-0.8,0.2-0.8) and aspect ratios of the enclosure. The effect of ( and on heat transfer and flow were addressed.Two different patterns of the flow field were observed. The first is the flow circulate in single primary vortex strangled by two trapped fluids and the second pattern is the flow consist of two vortexes separated by one trapped fluid.With increasing of Ra heat transfer rate(Nusselt number)increased and for increasing baffles length the heat transfer rate decreases. The numerical results of the values of average Nusselt number and maximum absolute stream function have been confirmed by comparing it with similar previous works using the same boundary conditions. Good agreement was obtained.