Conjugate natural convection heat transfer in an inclined square cavity containing a conducting block

Abstract

The present work is concerned with computation of natural convection flow in a square enclosure with a centered internal conducting square block both of which are given an inclination angle. Finite volume method through the concepts of staggered grid and SIMPLE algorithm have been applied. Deferred QUICK scheme has been used to discretize the convective fluxes and central difference for diffusive fluxes. The problem of conjugate natural convection has been taken up for validating the code. The abrupt variation in the properties at the solid/fluid interface are taken care of with the harmonic mean formulation. Solution has been performed in the computational domain as a whole with proper treatment at the solid/fluid interface. Computations have been performed for Ra = 10 3–10 6, angle of inclination varying from 15° to 90° in steps of 15° and ratio of solid to fluid thermal conductivities of 0.2 and 5.0. Results are presented in terms of streamlines, isotherms, local and average Nusselt number.