Conjugate natural convection heat transfer in a partitioned differentially-heated square cavity

Abstract

In this study numerical results for conjugate natural convection flow and heat transfer in a differentially-heated square cavity divided by a partition with finite thickness and thermal conductivity are presented. A series of numerical simulation is carried out using the finite volume method over a wide range of the Rayleigh number (105–109), with three dimensionless partition thicknesses (0.05, 0.1 and 0.2) and three dimensionless partition positions (0.25, 0.5 and 0.75), both are non-dimensionalized by the cavity width. The results show that the average Nusselt number increases with the Rayleigh number but decreases with partition thickness. It is also found that the partition position has a negligible effect on the average Nusselt number for the whole range of Rayleigh number considered.