The influence of natural convection on the temperature decay of a porous thermal layer

Abstract

Temperature decay in sealed rockbeds has been recorded. The rockbeds lost energy through the top surface and the results indicated that different natural convective flows occurred in beds of fixed depth and rock size but different lateral dimensions. However, the different flows had no effect on the mean power density dissipated through the top of the beds. A simple numerical conduction model based on the 'power integral method' was used to calculate the temperature decay. The experimental results suggested that an insulated porous lower boundary was appropriate for the model and this gave the best agreement with the experiments.