Natural convection in polar enclosure heated from below and cooled from above

• Main Authors: Abdullah M.H.R.O (Author), Alias, S.K (Author), Bashar N.A.M (Author), Halmy, M.N (Author), Hamami, M.G.B.M (Author), Min Y.H (Author), Nasir S.M.F.S.A (Author), Rasih, R.A (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Institute of Physics Inc. 2016
• Subjects: Cylindrical sector enclosure; Finite difference; Natural convection
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher; View in Scopus
• ISBN: 0094243X (ISSN); 9780735414327 (ISBN)
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4965115

A numerical study of natural convection in fluid filled, 2-dimensional cylindrical sector enclosure for a wide variety of Rayleigh number is presented in this paper. Finite difference method with first order upwind was chosen for the solution of the mass, momentum and energy transfer governing equations. Stream-vorticity function is considered to reduce the pressure term in momentum equation. First, the code was validated against the numerical result taken from the previous study of fluid flow in a rectangular cavity. Simulations are performed for several values of both the length in radial direction with angle direction ratio of the enclosure in the range between (19/16)π to (19/4)π, and the Rayleigh number based on the angle of enclosure in the range between 102 to 106. The results show that the increase in both aspect ratio and Rayleigh number gives an effect on flow configuration of the enclosure. © 2016 Author(s).