The Ra-Pr domain of laminar natural convection in an enclosure heated from the side

The phenomenon of natural convection in a square enclosure heated and cooled in the horizontal direction was investigated numerically in the Prandtl number range 0.01-10 and the Rayleigh number range 102-1011. The numerical method relied on the full governing equations for time-dependent flows. The study focused on the detection of inertia-sustained fluctuations in the flow field and on the highest Rayleigh number where steady-state laminar flows are possible. It was found that the highest Rayleigh number decreases dramatically as the Prandtl number decreases. This finding agrees qualitatively with experimental observations of transition to turbulent natural convection and with the “local Reynolds number” criterion of transition to turbulence recommended by the buckling theory of turbulent flow.

[1]  R. Mahajan,et al.  An experimental determination of transition limits in a vertical natural convection flow adjacent to a surface , 1979, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[2]  T. Fujii.  Experimental Studies of Free Convection Heat Transfer , 1959 .

[3]  J. Welty,et al.  Natural convection with mercury in a uniformly heated vertical channel during unstable laminar and transitional flow , 1975 .

[4]  Frank P. Incropera,et al.  Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer , 1981 .

[5]  B. Gebhart,et al.  An experimental study of the transition of natural convection flow adjacent to a vertical surface , 1974 .

[6]  I. Catton,et al.  NATURAL CONVECTION IN ENCLOSURES , 1978 .

[7]  T. C. Chawla.  Annual review of numerical fluid mechanics and heat transfer. Volume 1 , 1986 .

[8]  A. Bejan.  Convection Heat Transfer , 1984 .

[9]  B. Mikić.  On destabilization of shear flows: concept of admissible system perturbations , 1988 .

[10]  S. Patankar.  Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow , 2018, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering.

[11]  C. Hoogendoorn,et al.  On the stability of the natural convection flow in a square cavity heated from the side , 1990 .

[12]  Christoph Beckermann,et al.  Natural Convection of Liquid Metals in Vertical Cavities , 1988 .

[13]  Adrian Bejan,et al.  BUCKLING FLOWS: A NEW FRONTIER IN FLUID MECHANICS , 1987 .

[14]  Adrian Bejan,et al.  The Prandtl Number Effect on the Transition in Natural Convection Along a Vertical Surface , 1990 .

[15]  N. W. Davies,et al.  SODIUM NATURAL CONVECTION FROM A VERTICAL PLATE , 1978 .

[16]  M. Uotani.  Natural convection heat transfer in thermally stratified liquid metal. , 1987 .