Conjugate natural convection in the roof cavity of heavy construction building during summer

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of conjugate natural convection inside a building attic in the shape of a rectangular enclosure bounded by realistic walls made from composite construction materials under summer day boundary conditions. The effects of cavity aspect ratio, Rayleigh number ( Ra), and orientation of the external surfaces on the flow and heat transfer characteristics were the main focus of the investigation. The problem was formulated in terms of the vorticity-stream function procedure, and the governing equations for steady, laminar, two-dimensional conjugate natural convection heat transfer were solved by employing the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) control volume method along with under-relaxation factors for temperature, vorticity, and stream functions. For Ra ranging from 10 3 to 10 10, steady state results of the streamline and temperature contours in addition to local and mean Nusselt number at all surfaces of the cavity were obtained. The results show that the values of Ra and the aspect ratio have significant effect on the temperature and stream function contours within the enclosure. Another important finding of the study is that heat flux into the room increases with the increase of both the aspect ratio and Rayleigh number.