Numerical Study of Steady Natural Convection Flow in A Prismatic Enclosure with Strip Heater on Bottom Wall Using Flexpde

Abstract

Laminar natural convection in two-dimensional Prismatic enclosure is studied and analysis numerically. For the enclosure top inclined walls are considered at low temperature, two vertical walls are adiabatic and strip heater at constant high temperature mounted on the bottom enclosure, while the reminder bottom wall kept at low known temperature. The partial differential equations for two dimensional conservation of mass, momentum and energy are solved using finite element software package (FLEXPDE.5). For Rayleigh number varying from 103 to 105 and for constant Prandtal number Pr=0.7 the change in temperature and flow fields (stream functions) were investigated for different heater locations and for different number of heaters. The effect of the number and locations of the strip heaters on local and mean Nusslet number were examined. Results were presented by streamlines, isotherms and Nusselt number and it indicates that the Nusselt number is significantly affected by increasing both Ra and number of heaters. A comparison of the streamlines, isotherms curves and average Nusselt at the same boundary conditions was made with that obtained by Tanmay et al.(7), and showed a good agreement.