Laminar natural convection in a fully partitioned enclosure containing fluid with nonlinear thermophysical properties

Abstract

The effects of a heat conducting partition on the laminar natural convection heat transfer and fluid flow were obtained by comparing the numerical and experimental results for a cubic enclosure without and with a partition. The two opposite vertical walls of the enclosure were isothermal at different temperatures. The working fluid was glycerol. The complete vertical partition, made of Plexiglass, was positioned in the middle of the enclosure. The visualizations of the velocity and temperature fields were obtained by using respectively, Plexiglass and liquid crystal particles as tracers. A middle plane perpendicular to the partition was numerically modeled. The steady two-dimensional model accounted for the variable thermophysical properties of the fluid. The finite volume method based on the finite difference approach was applied. The convective terms were approximated using a deferred correction central difference scheme. The velocity and temperature fields and the distribution of the local and average Nusselt numbers were found as a function of the Rayleigh (38 000 <Ra <369 000) and Prandtl (2700 < Pr < 7000) numbers.