Natural Convection in Enclosures

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the complex nature of the natural convection phenomena in enclosures. It discusses the two basic configurations of natural convection— that is, a rectangular cavity and a horizontal circular cylinder. In rectangular cavities, consideration is given to the two-dimensional convective motion generated by the buoyancy force on the fluid in a rectangle and to the associated heat transfer. The two long sides are vertical boundaries held at different temperatures and the short sides can either be heat conducting or insulated. Particular attention is given to the different flow regimes that can occur and the heat transfer across the fluid space between the two plane parallel vertical boundaries. Although heat transfer by radiation may not be negligible it is independent of the other types of heat transfer and can be fairly accurately calculated separately. To formulate the boundary value problem that describes this phenomena it is assumed that: (a) the motion is two-dimensional and steady, (b) the fluid is incompressible and frictional heating is negligible, and (c) the difference between the hot wall and cold wall temperatures is small relative to the absolute temperatures of the cold wall. In horizontal circular cylinder, consideration is given to the large Rayleigh number flow with the Prandtl number large and the Grashof number of unit order of the magnitude.