Natural convection from a buried elliptic heat source

Abstract

Numerical solutions are presented for the natural convection heat transfer from an elliptic heat source buried beneath a semi-infinite, saturated, porous medium. The surface of the medium is assumed to be permeable. The governing equations for Darcy flow are solved using finite differences. The complicated geometry is handled through the use of a body-fitted curvilinear coordinate system. Results are presented for Ra values ranging from 10 to 200 and ellipse aspect ratio values from 1.0 (circular cylinder) to 0.167. Two body orientations have been considered. The slender orientation yields much higher hear transfer rates (especially at low ellipse aspect ratio values) than the blunt orientation. The numerical simulations indicate that the boundary-layer approximations cannot be employed for low ellipse aspect ratios. In addition, the heat loss does not depend on the burial depth.