Influence of interior angle on pure mixed convection of lid-driven parallelogram cavity

Abstract

A numerical study is carried out to investigate the pure mixed convection in a lid-driven parallelogram cavity filled with water. Both side walls of the cavity are thermally insulated and the top and the bottom walls are kept at low and high temperature respectively. The top wall is moving along the positive x-axis with a constant speed, while the other walls are stationary. The non-dimensional Navier-Stokes and thermal energy equations governing the fluid flow and heat transfer inside the cavity are formulated for the present problem. Numerical simulation using finite element method is carried out to solve these governing equations for the parametric variations of the governing parameters such as Reynolds (Re) and Grashof (Gr) numbers within the range of 0.1 ≤ Re ≤ 800 and 0.01 ≤ Gr ≤ 6.4 × 105 at unity Richardson number (Ri = 1). The interior angle of the parallelogram cavity is also varied from 60° to 120° in order to investigate the transition characteristics from laminar to chaos at pure mixed convection. The flow and thermal fields within the cavity under the selected range of Re and Gr are observed via streamline and isotherm contours. The average Nusselt number of the heated wall is scrutinized carefully to determine the influence of the interior angle of the cavity on the transition flow during pure mixed convection, which is the main feature of the present investigation.