A line source of heat is situated in an enclosure with inlets and an outlet for the contained fluid. The convection plume formed must take a curved shape because of the asymmetry of the enclosure. We show how boundary-layer theory can be used to find this shape in the case where the plume's deflection is small. Two effects govern the shape of the curve; a buoyancy effect and an inertial effect due to the bounding walls. By solving the outer potential flow problem, both effects can be included in the model. Finally, a stability analysis is carried out for steady plumes which shows that any steady solution with an inflection point, as well as several other solutions, is unstable. A comparison is made with previous work which does not include all these effects, and with some experimental results.
展开▼
