Natural Convection in a Wavy Porous Cavity With Sinusoidal Temperature Distributions on Both Side Walls Filled With a Nanofluid: Buongiorno's Mathematical Model

Abstract

A numerical study of the natural convection flow in a porous cavity with wavy bottom and top walls having sinusoidal temperature distributions on vertical walls filled with a nanofluid is numerically investigated. The mathematical model has been formulated in dimensionless stream function and temperature taking into account the Darcy–Boussinesq approximation and the Buongiorno's nanofluid model. The boundaryvalue problem has been solved numerically on the basis of a secondorder accurate finite difference method. Efforts have been focused on the effects of five types of influential factors such as the Rayleigh (Ra = 10–300) and Lewis (Le = 1–1000) numbers, the buoyancyratio parameter (Nr = 0.1–0.4), the Brownian motion parameter (Nb = 0.1–0.4), and the thermophoresis parameter (Nt = 0.1–0.4) on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics. It has been found that the average Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are increasing functions of the Rayleigh number, buoyancyratio parameter, and thermophoresis parameter, and decreasing functions of the Lewis number and Brownian motion parameter.