Numerical Analysis on the Effect of Wavy Partitions on Natural Convection in Porous Enclosure

Abstract

The influence of partitions on natural convection in a differentially heated porous enclosure has been investigated for three different partition shapes, namely, sine-wave, corrugated and square-wave shape. The objective is to identify the best partition shape with regard to achieve maximum reduction in the rate of convection heat transfer. Darcy flow model has been used to describe flow in porous media. Coordinate transformation has been used to formulate the governing equations for sine-wave partition owing to its wavy nature. To assess the effectiveness of various partition shapes, the results are compared with porous enclosure without partition and with straight partition. The governing equations are solved using the successive accelerated replacement scheme for a wide range of parameters like partition amplitude, position, Rayleigh number, enclosure aspect ratio (AR), and inclination angle. One of the findings reveals that for the same amplitude and position, the square-wave partition yields the maximum suppression in the value of Nusselt number.