Laminar natural convection flow in a cylindrical cavity application to the storage of LNG

Abstract The numerical simulation of laminar natural convection in a vertical cylindrical cavity is proposed. The cavity is insulated at the bottom, laterally heated at a uniform heat flux and cooled by a non uniform evaporative heat flux at the top surface obeying the Hashemi–Wesson's law. The equations of mass conservation, momentum and energy are resolved with finite-volume method in fully implicit form. The influence of the characteristic parameters (10 3  ≤  Ra  ≤ 10 5 , Pr  = 2, 1/3 ≤  Al  ≤ 1) on the thermal and dynamic behavior at steady state is analysed and discussed. In particular, the study describes the solutions at Ra  = 10 5 and Pr  = 2 for various aspect ratios. The evaporative heat flux is computed for all the parameters and it is found that its maximum is localized near the lateral wall whereas its minimum is at the free surface center.