Effect of Heat-Generating Solid Body on Mixed Convection Flow in a Ventilated Cavity

Abstract

The mixed convection flow and heat transfer characteristics inside a square ventilated cavity with a heat-generating solid circular body located at the center have been investigated numerically. The inlet opening is at the bottom of the left wall, while the outlet one is at the top of the right wall, and all the walls of the cavity are considered to be adiabatic. A Galerkin weighted residual finite element method is used to solve the governing equations of mass, momentum, and energy. The behavior of the fluid in the ranges of dimensionless cylinder diameter from 0.1 to 0.6 of the heat generating body, thermal conductivity ratio range from 0.2 to 50 between solid and fluid, and heat generating parameter range from 1 to 5 is described in detail. The medium considered is air with a Prandtl number of 0.71. It is found that the flow and temperature field is strongly dependent on the already-mentioned parameters for the ranges considered. The variation of the mean Nusselt number, the dimensionless average drag force, and the average temperature of the fluid versus Richardson number are presented for these parameters.