Effect of surface waviness and aspect ratio on heat transfer inside a wavy enclosure

Abstract

A numerical simulation has been carried out to investigate the buoyancy induced flow and heat transfer characteristics inside a wavy walled enclosure. The enclosure consists of two parallel wavy and two straight walls. The top and the bottom walls are wavy and kept isothermal. Two straight‐vertical sidewalls are considered adiabatic. Governing equations are discretized using the control volume based finite‐volume method with collocated variable arrangement. Simulation was carried out for a range of surface waviness ratios, λ=0.00‐0.25; aspect ratios, A=0.25‐0.5; and Rayleigh numbers Ra=100‐107 for a fluid having Prandtl number equal to 1.0. Results are presented in the form of local and global Nusselt number distributions, streamlines, and isothermal lines for different values of surface waviness and aspect ratios. For a special case of λ=0 and A=1.0, the average Nusselt number distribution is compared with available reference. The results suggest that natural convection heat transfer is changed considerably when surface waviness changes and also depends on the aspect ratio of the domain. In addition to the heat transfer results, the heat transfer irreversibility in terms of Bejan number (Be) was measured. For a set of selected values of the parameters (λ, A, and Ra), a contour of the Bejan number is presented at the end of this paper.