Effect of several heated interior bodies on turbulent natural convection in enclosures

Abstract

In this study, turbulent natural convection in a square enclosure including one or four hot and cold bodies is numerically investigated in the range of Rayleigh numbers of . The shape of the internal bodies is square or rectangular with the same surface areas and different aspect ratios. In all cases, the horizontal walls of the enclosure are adiabatic and the vertical ones are isothermal. It is desired to investigate the influence of different shapes and arrangements of internal bodies on the heat transfer rate inside the enclosure with wide-ranging applications such as ventilation of buildings, electronic cooling and industrial coldbox packages. Governing equations including Reynolds-averaged-Navier-Stokes equations have been solved numerically with finite volume method and turbulence model in a staggered grid. The boundary condition for turbulence model is based on the standard wall function approach. Strongly implicit method is employed to solve the discretized systems of algebraic equations with a remarkable rate of convergence. The effects of several parameters such as distance between the bodies, aspect ratio and Rayleigh number on heat transfer rate have been investigated. The most change in heat transfer rate at high values of Rayleigh numbers is associated with alteration in distance between square bodies. Moreover, the horizontal installation of rectangular bodies with h/w = 1/3 is accompanied by a maximum reduction of heat transfer at low Rayleigh numbers. The present results have been compared with previous experimental and numerical works regarding enclosures with or without internal bodies and reasonable agreement is observed.