Natural convection inside cubical cavities: numerical solutions with two boundary conditions

• DOI: 10.1007/s40430-013-0033-y
• Publication Date: 2013-05-11T09:51:06Z
• Authors: Elie Luis M. Padilla; Marcos A. S. Lour...; Aristeu Silveira-...
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

The study deals with the three-dimensional natural convection in closed cubic cavities. The boundary conditions were set as two walls (forward and backward) at constant but different temperatures and adiabatic and conducting walls in top and bottom. In the remaining walls the adiabatic condition was used. The Navier–Stokes and energy equations were discretized with the finite volume method using staggered Cartesian meshes. The characteristic flow patterns for a few values of the Rayleigh number up to 107 and of the Prandtl number Pr = 0.71 are shown. Analysis of the different boundary conditions influence on the thermal field and the effects in the determination of local and averaged heat transfer coefficient are also performed. We noticed a good agreement with experimental data.