Natural convection in a triangular top wall enclosure with a solid strip

Abstract

Natural convection inside a two-dimensional rectangular cavity with a triangular roof having an adiabatic solid strip inserted at a middle of the cavity is studied numerically using a finite volume method. Both of the triangular roof and the bottom wall are considered adiabatic while the vertical left side wall is maintained at constant temperature higher than that of inside fluid temperature. The right side wall is considered differentially heated by supplying a constant heat flux. The working fluid is chosen for analysis is air. The Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) solution commercial package ANSYS FLUENT 14.0 is used for the numerical simulation purpose. The results are presented in the form of isotherms, streamlines, velocity vector and average Nusselt number (Nu) for Rayleigh numbers in the range of 103 to 106.Throughout this study, the aspect ratio is kept equal to 0.5.It is found that the solid adiabatic strip inside the cavity has a significant effect on the flow and thermal performance. The results indicated the usual fact that when the Rayleigh number increases the average Nusselt number also increases.