An Experimental Study on Natural Convection Heat Transfer in an Inclined Square Enclosure Containing Internal Energy Sources

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to study two-dimensional laminar natural convection within an inclined square enclosure containing fluid with internal energy sources bounded by four rigid planes of constant equal temperature. Inclination angles, from the horizontal, of 0, 15, 30, and 45 deg for Rayleigh numbers from 1.0 × 104 to 1.5 × 105 were studied. At inclined angles of 0 and 15 deg, there are two extreme values of temperature and temperature gradient within the fluid, while there is only one at 30 and 45 deg. Local and average Nusselt numbers are obtained on all four walls. As the inclination angle increases, the average Nusselt number increases on the right (upper) and bottom walls, decreases on the left (lower) wall and stays almost constant on the top wall.

Natural convection in wavy enclosures with volumetric heat sources

“…There is no negative value for Ra I ¼ 10 5 and Ra E ¼ 10 5 (Fig. 8(d)) but they are observed at Ra I ¼ 10 6 and Ra E ¼ 10 6 . It means that the internal Rayleigh number plays a dominant role even for the highest value of the external Rayleigh number as seen in Fig.…”

“…Based on technological applications of internal heat generation problems in nuclear reactors and geothermal applications, Acharya and Goldstein [5] and Lee and Goldstein [6] obtained several solutions. Then, Shim and Hyun [7] reported a time-dependent solution of natural convection in a square cavity with internal heat generation.…”

Natural convection in differentially heated and partially divided square cavities with internal heat generation

“…Literature review shows various studies have been published on the mechanism of natural convection in heated enclosure containing heat generating fluids with different geometrical parameters and boundary conditions: an experimental study with equal boundary temperatures (Kulacki and Goldstein, 1972), similar to the previous study but inclined enclosures (Lee and Goldstein, 1988), a numerical study similar to that in Lee and Goldstein (1988) but with different aspect ratios (Acharya and Goldstein, 1985), a numerical study of a fluid layer with insulated side and bottom walls and rigid or free top surface (Emara and Kulacki, 1979), a numerical study with insulated side walls, heated bottom, cooled top walls (Rahman and Sharif, 2003), numerical studies with differentially heated with insulated bottom and top walls (Fusegi et al, 1992a) and with different aspect ratios (Fusegi et al, 1992b).…”

Integral transform solution of natural convection in a square cavity with volumetric heat generation

“…Lee and Goldstein (1988) used a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to investigate experimentally the temperature distribution and the heat transfer rates within an inclined square enclosure containing fluid with internal energy sources bounded by four rigid planes of constant equal temperature. The experimental results of Lee and Goldstein (1988) were later employed to compare with the numerical solutions obtained by May (1991).…”

“…Lee and Goldstein (1988) used a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to investigate experimentally the temperature distribution and the heat transfer rates within an inclined square enclosure containing fluid with internal energy sources bounded by four rigid planes of constant equal temperature. The experimental results of Lee and Goldstein (1988) were later employed to compare with the numerical solutions obtained by May (1991). Based on a finite-difference procedure, Acharya and Goldstein (1985) and Rahman and Sharif (2003) separately studied natural convection in an inclined and vertical square enclosure containing internal energy sources and subjected to external heating, and analyzed the flow patterns for different Rayleigh numbers (both internal and external).…”