Symmetry-Breaking in a Porous Cavity with Moving Side Walls

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical investigation of the steady laminar mixed convection flow in a porous square enclosure has been considered. This structure represents a practical system such as an external through flow of cooled-air an electronic device from its moving sides. The heating was supplied by an internal volumetric source with an uniform distribution at the middle part of its bottom, while the other walls were assumed thermally insulated. Moreover, the momentum transfer in the porous substrate was numerically investigated using the Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer law. The governing equations of the posed problem have been solved by applying the finite difference technique on non-uniform grids. For all simulations, the Reynolds number and the porosity have been fixed respectively to Re=100 and φ=0.9. Darcy’s value was varied in the range from 0.001 to 0.1. The results detected the existence of a radical change in the contour patterns for Richardson number equal to 11.76 and 11.77 with fixed Da=0.1. This behavior signified that the fluid is fully convected for higher Darcy number.