Mixed convection in an enclosure with a heat-conducting body

Abstract

Combined free convection and forced convection in a square enclosure with a finite-size heat source is studied numerically. A square heat-conducting body is located somewhere within the enclosure. The present study simulates a practical system, such as an air-cooled electronic equipment with heat components or an oven with heaters. Emphasis is placed on the influences of the configurations and physical properties of the enclosure. The developed mathematical model is governed by the coupled equations of stream function, vorticity transport, and energy, and is solved by employing the cubic spline collocation method. The computation is carried out for wide ranges of Reynolds and Grashof numbers. The results indicate that both the heat transfer coefficient and the dimensionless temperature in the body center strongly depend on the configurations of the system studied, such as size, location, and thermal conductivity of the conducting body and the location of the outflow opening. Detailed results of the interaction between forced airstream and the bouyancy-driven flow by the heat source are demonstrated by the distributions of the isotherms and streamlines and the variations of the heat transfer coefficient.