Natural Convection of non-Newtonian Shear-Thinning Fluid Flow inside a Skewed Cavity

摘要

In this research, a numerical investigation has been performed to study the laminar natural convection inside a skewed cavity filled with non-Newtonian power-law (shear-thinning) fluid using the finite volume method with a collocated grid arrangement. The non-dimensional form of the governing equations which include the equation of continuity, Navier-Stokes equations, and energy equation has been transformed to Cartesian curvilinear coordinates to deal with non-orthogonal grids. The in-house code which is written in FORTRAN programming language is first validated against existing published results, shows an excellent agreement. The study has been conducted for a wide range of Rayleigh number (Ra) and a fixed value of Prandtl number (Pr) and power-law index (n). The obtained results are presented regarding isotherms, streamlines, velocity, and temperature profiles as well as the rate of heat transfer for shear thinning fluids.