Numerical Analysis of Laminar Natural Convection in a Quadrantal Cavity with a Solid Adiabatic Fin Attached to the Hot Vertical Wall

Abstract

Numerical analysis of laminar natural convection in a quadrantal cavity filled with water having finned hot and cold on adjacent walls have been made to examine heat and fluid flow. Numerical solutions are obtained using a commercial computational fluid dynamics package, FLUENT, using the finite volume method. Effects of the Rayleigh number, Ra, non-dimensional fin location and non-dimensional fin length on the Nusselt number, Nu, as well as stream function and temperature fields are investigated for the range of Ra from 104 to 107.

Keywords

• Natural convection
• Quadrantal cavity
• adiabatic fin
• Rayleigh number
• Nusselt number.