Numerical Investigation of Free Convection in a Porous Corrugated Cavity Filled With Silver (Ag) Dispersed Nano-Fluid

Abstract

The present work examines the convective heat transfer characteristics in a two-dimensional (2D) corrugated closed cavity embedded with porous media. The cavity is considered to be filled with silver dispersed water-based nano-fluid. The bottom wall is heated uniformly and non-uniformly in two different cases keeping both side corrugated walls isothermally cold with an adiabatic top wall. The various parameters are selected to perform numerical simulation in the range of solid-volume fraction, 0% ≤ ϕ ≤ 10%, 103 ≤ Ra ≤ 106, and 10−4 ≤ Da ≤ 10−2. The investigation shows that the heat transfer rate shows an increasing trend at high values of Ra and Da due to strong buoyancy forces in uniform and non-uniform heating. However, an increase in heat transfer in uniform heating is more compared to non-uniform heating. It is also observed that the nano-fluid has a great impact on the heat transfer characteristics due to its high value of thermal conductivity and irregular motion of the particles. As a result, the average Nusselt number (Nuavg) shows an increasing trend for increasing solid-volume fraction values.