Critical condition for Rayleigh-Bénard convection of Bingham fluids in rectangular enclosures

Abstract

Two-dimensional steady-state numerical simulations have been conducted for laminar Rayleigh-Bénard convection of Bingham fluids in rectangular enclosures to analyse the critical Rayleigh number Racrit for which convection ceases to influence the thermal transport and thermal conduction becomes the principal heat transfer mechanism. The influences of Bingham numberBn on the critical Rayleigh number Racrit have been investigated for different values of aspect ratio (height: length) AR (ranging from 1/4 to 4) and nominal Prandtl number Pr (ranging from 10 to 500) for both constant wall temperature (CWT) and constant wall heat flux (CWHF) boundary conditions for the horizontal walls. It has been found that Racrit increases with increasing values of Bn andAR, regardless of the boundary condition. The values of Racrit have been found to be greater in the case of CWT boundary condition than in the CWHF configuration forAR≤1, whereas an opposite trend is obtained for AR>1 for Bingham fluids. Additionally, Racrit has been found be insensitive to the change of Pr for Newtonian fluids (i.e.Bn=0), whereas Racrit increases with increasing Pr for Bingham fluids irrespective of the boundary condition. A detailed scaling analysis has also been performed to elucidate the effects of Bn,Pr,AR on Racrit for Bingham fluids. The results of scaling analysis and numerical findings have been utilised to propose a new correlation for Racrit for both Newtonian and Bingham fluids in the case of both CWT and CWHF boundary conditions.