Steady Natural Convection of Non-Newtonian Power-Law Fluid in a Trapezoidal Enclosure

Abstract

Numerical investigation of free convection heat transfer in a differentially heated trapezoidal cavity filled with non-Newtonian Power-law fluid has been performed in this study. The left inclined surface is uniformly heated whereas the right inclined surface is maintained as uniformly cooled. The top and bottom surfaces are kept adiabatic with initially quiescent fluid inside the enclosure. Finite-volume-based commercial software FLUENT 14.5 is used to solve the governing equations. Dependency of various flow parameters of fluid flow and heat transfer is analyzed including Rayleigh number (Ra) ranging from 10 5 to 10 7 , Prandtl number (Pr) from 100 to 10,000, and power-law index ( n ) from 0.6 to 1.4. Outcomes have been reported in terms of isotherms, streamlines, and local Nusselt number for various Ra, Pr, n , and inclined angles. Grid sensitivity analysis is performed and numerically obtained results have been compared with those results available in the literature and were in good agreement.