Numerical Investigation of Laminar Natural Convection in a Square Cavity With Wavy Wall and Horizontal Fin Attached to the Hot Wall

Abstract

Laminar natural convection in differentially heated square cavity with right cold wavy wall and horizontal conducting fin attached to its left hot wall has been investigated numerically. The vertical walls are maintained at different isothermal temperatures, while the horizontal walls are insulated. The fluid that filled the cavity is air with Prandtl number of 0.71. The investigation has been performed for Rayleigh number in the range of 103–106, the thermal conductivity ratio was varied from 10 to 105, three fin lengths and positions have been examined (0.25, 0.5, and 0.75), and three numbers of undulation were tested (one, two, and three undulations). The wave amplitude and the fin thickness were kept constant at 0.05 and 0.04, respectively. The results obtained show that increasing the fin thermal conductivity or the Rayleigh number increases the average Nusselt number especially when the fin length increases. It was also found that the fin position enhances the heat transfer when the fin is placed opposite to the crest of the wavy wall. The trend of the local Nusselt number is wavy. The effect of undulations number appears when the fin length is greater than 0.5. The average Nusselt number enhanced when a conducting fin is added to the cavity with wavy wall and without fin by 51.23% and 56.85% for one and three undulations, respectively, when the Rayleigh number is 105 and the fin length is 0.75.