A numerical study of natural convection around a square, horizontal, heated cylinder placed in an enclosure

• Published in: International journal of heat and mass transfer Vol. 49; no. 23; pp. 4608 - 4623
• Main Authors: Kumar De, Arnab, Dalal, Amaresh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2006; Elsevier
• Subjects: Convection and heat transfer; Enclosure; Exact sciences and technology; Fluid dynamics; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Heatlines; Laminar flows; Laminar flows in cavities; Natural convection; Physics; Square cylinder; Turbulent flows, convection, and heat transfer; Uniform heat flux; Uniform wall temperature; Heatlines; Natural convection; Enclosure; Uniform wall temperature; Uniform heat flux; Square cylinder; Internal source; Temperature distribution; Streamlines; Nusselt number; Annular space; Digital simulation; Cavity flow; Inclination; Modelling; Square section; Heat transfer; Cylinders; Finite difference method
• ISSN: 0017-9310; 1879-2189
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2006.04.020

In this paper, natural convection around a tilted heated square cylinder kept in an enclosure has been studied in the range of 10 3 ⩽ Ra ⩽ 10 6. Streamfunction-vorticity formulation of the Navier–Stokes equation is solved numerically using finite-difference method in non-orthogonal body-fitted coordinate system. Detailed flow and heat transfer features for two different thermal boundary conditions are reported. Effects of the enclosure geometry has been assessed using three different aspect ratio placing the square cylinder at different heights from the bottom. The concept of heatfunction has been employed to trace the path of heat transport. It is found that the uniform wall temperature heating is quantitatively different from the uniform wall heat flux heating. Flow pattern and thermal stratification are modified, if aspect ratio is varied. Overall heat transfer also changes for different aspect ratio.