Turbulent Natural Convection in Partitioned Square Cavities with Different Lengths and Positions

摘要

The effect of partition on turbulent natural convection has been investigated numerically with different lengths and positions in an air filled square cavity. The top wall of the cavity is assumed to be cold and the other three walls are hot. Two-dimensional governing equations based on Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved numerically by control volume method in a staggered grid manner. The iterative SIMPLE algorithm is also used to solve the discretized momentum equations to compute the intermediate velocity and pressure fields linked through the momentum equations. The hybrid differencing scheme which is based on a combination of central and upwind schemes is employed to discretize the convective and diffusion terms of the equations respectively. To describe the structure of turbulent flow which is changed due to the increasing importance of viscous effects, wall function was applied to simulate the turbulent flow. The results show that when the partition is placed on the top or bottom wall, the heat transfer rate through the bottom wall increases by increasing the partition length. The number of vortices established in the cavity depends on the partition length. Furthermore, when the partition is mounted on the left or right wall, only a small part of the top wall has a direct interaction with the left wall and the rest of that has an indirect interaction with the bottom wall.