Analysis Of Field Synergy In Bottom Heated Lid Driven Cubical Cavity

Abstract

This study presents an innovative visualization tool for the analysis of the mixed convection in a lid-driven air filled cubical cavity heated from below. The total energy of the flow in the cavity isvisualized based on the energy stream functions or energy streamlines. Also the heat transfer enhancement in the cavity is presented with an analogy between conduction and convection, namely, the field synergy principle. Flow is assumed to be driven by the vertical temperature gradient and by the top lid of the cavity, which is assumed to slide on its own plane at a uniform speed. The top and bottom walls are assumed to be isothermal and all other walls are thermally insulated. Non dimensional governing equations of this problem are solved by using the finite volume method. Established open source CFD package OpenFOAM is utilized to investigate the flow with respect to the control parameters arising in the system. The nonlinear terms arising in the governing equations are discretized with the NVD schemes. The convection differencing schemes namely, UPWIND, QUICK, SUPERBEE and SFCD discussed and are used to simulate the flow using MPI code. It is observed that the computational cost for all the differencing schemes get reduced tremendously when the MPI code is implemented. Also SFCD scheme gave the Nuseelt number values close to those available in the literature. Extensive numerical flow visualization is conducted for the Reynolds number (Re = 100, 400, 1000) and the Richardson number (Ri = 0.001, 1, 10), which categorize the free and forced convective flow, respectively. It is observed that for a fixed value of Re, as Ri increases, the average Nusselt number (Nu¯), decreases. This shows that the natural convection starts to prevail with an increasing of Ri. But, for a fixed Ri, as Re increases (Nu¯) increases and the forced convection mode becomes dominant, leading to a chaotic flow. Plots demonstrating the influences of Re and Ri in termsof the contours of the fluid streamlines, isotherms, vortex corelines, and field synergy principle. The synergy angle of buoyant-aiding flow is high while the buoyant-opposing flow is significantly less than that of forced convection flow.