Open Access

ARTICLE

Natural Convection in a Square Cavity: Numerical Study for Different values of Prandtl Number

ADNANI Massinissa¹, MEZIANI Bachir², OURRAD Ouerdia², ZITOUNE Mounir¹

1 Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Faculté de Technologie, Université de Bejaia, 06000, Algérie.
2 Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Faculté des Sciences Exactes, Université de Bejaia, 06000, Algérie. Corresponding author: M.ADNANI, Email: massinissa.adnani@univ-bejaia.dz

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2016, 12(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3970/fdmp.2016.012.001

Abstract

A numerical study of natural convection in a square cavity subjected to the thermals boundary conditions on the sidewalls is presented and discussed. The fluid is Newtonian and equations governing the flow field and the heat transfer are given in dimensionless form. The finite volume method was adopted to solve the algebraic system. Influence of the Prandtl and the Rayleigh numbers on heat transfer and the flow field is illustrated and discussed as the stream functions, isotherms, horizontal velocity, local and average Nusselt numbers. Results indicate that improved heat transfer is more pronounced with increasing Rayleigh number. In particular, at low Rayleigh numbers, the flow field is slightly pronounced with increasing Prandtl number and decreases by increasing the Rayleigh number. In contrast, the heat transfer is not affected by variations of Prandtl number at low Rayleigh numbers and decrease with increasing the Prandtl number especially for very high Rayleigh numbers.

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Keywords

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