Analysis of Turbulent Free Convection in Enclosure with Conductive Partitions

Abstract

A numerical method is presented to investigate the turbulent free convection inside an enclosure with partitions. The conductive partitions were located at the bottom wall. The Navier-Stokes and energy equations besides to the kinetic and dissipation equations were discretized by using a finite volume method. The solution of these equations was made via constructing a Fortran 90 computer program. The turbulence in the flow was modeled by using a k-ε model. The obtained results show that the conductive partitions represented a key factor for enhancing the rate of heat transfer. Also the results showed that the partitions height has more effect on enhancing the rate of heat transfer compared with the partitions thickness.The height of partitions were ranged from 0.25≤ h ≤ 0.65 and the width from 0.07 ≤ w ≤ 0.13. The enclosure was partially heated and the range of the considered values of Rayleigh number was up to 1014. The maximum rate of heat transfer is enhanced by 35% with increasing partitions height up to h= 0.65.