Abstract
This study focuses on the numerical simulation of heat transfer by natural convection in a rectangular enclosure, filled with a liquid metal (low Prandtl number) partially heated from below with a sinusoidal temperature. The value of the study lies in its involvement in the crystal growth for the manufacture of semiconductors and electronics cooling. Indeed, the occurrence of convection during crystal growth can lead to in homogeneities that lead to striations and defects that affect the quality of the crystals obtained by the Bridgman techniques or Chochrawlski. Temperature of the oscillations, due to the instabilities of the convective flow in the liquid metal, also induces non-uniform cooling in the solidification front. Convection is then studied in order to reduce it. A modelling of the problem in two dimensions was conducted using Comsol computer code that is based on the finite element method, by varying the configuration of the control parameters, namely, the Rayleigh number, the nature of fluid (Prandtl number) and amplitude of temperature on heat transfer rate (Nusselt number) on convective structures that appear.
Highlights
Natural convection in liquid metals is the subject of studies by metallurgists and engineers of nuclear reactors
This study focuses on the numerical simulation of heat transfer by natural convection in a rectangular enclosure, filled with a liquid metal partially heated from below with a sinusoidal temperature
Our work is to study the numerical heat transfer by natural convection in a rectangular enclosure filled with a liquid metal, partially heated from below with a sinusoidal temperature
Summary
Natural convection in liquid metals is the subject of studies by metallurgists and engineers of nuclear reactors. Stewarl and Weinberg [2] were among the first to study the natural convection in a two-dimensional cavity fluid containing low Prandtl number with insulated horizontal walls Their results show that the behavior of the flow in the liquid metal is different from conventional fluids. [3], [4] studied this phenomenon in several conditions with comparison of the experimental results by digital Their results confirm that the liquid metals are an excellent heat transfer medium. In addition to this practical aspect, the study of convective flows in liquid metals is of interest of fundamental research perspective This type of opaque fluids at low melting temperatures (eg 302.8 K for gallium) are fluids at low Prandtl number (Pr) and behavior when subjected to temperature gradients are quite different from those observed in fluids high number of Pr (such as water and air). The results obtained by the Comsol software using the numerical method of finite elements
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