Heat Transfer in a Square Porous Cavity With Partial Heating and Cooling for Opposite Vertical Walls

Numerical study has been conducted to investigate natural convection heat transfer in a square porous cavity with partial active vertical walls. The left vertical side wall is partially heated and the right side wall is partially cooled. Depending on the positions of the hot and cold parts, nine cases have been considered in this investigation. Flow and heat transfer characteristics for all cases have been studied for range of Rayleigh number 50 ≤ Ram ≤ 500. The governing equations are solved numerically with aid of the finite difference technique and Gauss – Siedel method. Numerical results showed that there are significant changes in the flow and temperature fields and the rate of heat transfer due to the change of the positions of hot-cold parts. Also, they showed that the maximum heat transfer occurs for the Lower-Upper arrangement, while the minimum heat transfer occurs for the Upper-Lower arrangement. A correlation between Nu and Ram proposed for each one of the nine cases.