Numerical simulation of coupled diffuse radiation and natural convection in a cubic cavity heated from bottom

Abstract

We present, a three-dimensional numerical simulation of coupled natural convection with diffuse radiation in a cubic cavity whose all four vertical walls are isothermal, the bottom wall is convectively heated and the top wall is insulated. All walls are treated as black, diffuse and opaque for radiation. The simulations are carried out for the fixed Rayleigh (Ra=105) and Prandtl numbers (Pr=0.71) for a transparent and participating medium. The flow visualization technique Q-criteria has been used for analysis of the flow structure. The isothermal surfaces inside the cavity form vertical co-axially convergent-divergent three-dimensional open and closed nozzles, while inside the cavity Q-criteria reveals the formation of Jellyfish like flow structure. The cavity contains four conical vortices whereas each vortex is occupied in tetrahedron space.