Numerical simulation of three dimensional natural convection heat transfer

Abstract

Natural convection heat transfer in a square cavity has attracted many attractions in recent years due to its wide applications such as cooling of radioactive waste containers, ventilation of rooms, solar energy collectors and crystal growth in liquids. A comprehensive review was presented by Davis (1983). However, among the previous numerical studies pertinent to this problem, little works have been done using 3-D simulation model. In recent years, the lattice Boltzmann method, a method based on mesoscopic kinetic equation for the particle distribution function, has attracted much interest in the physics and engineering communities. Lattice Boltzmann method is considerably as an alternative approach to the well-known finite difference, finite element, and finite volume techniques for solving the NavierStokes equations. Although as a new comer in numerical scheme, the lattice Boltzmann approach has proven to be versatile tools for simulating a wide variety of fluid dynamical applications (Chen and Doolen, 1998). These include turbulent single-phase flow, transport in porous media and multiphase flows in several scientific and industrial applications. However, the simulation of flows with heat transfer turned out to be much more difficult