THREE-DIMENSIONAL DRIVEN-CAVITY FLOWS WITH A MODERATE TEMPERATURE GRADIENT
要約
A method for the analysis of natural convection inside a cubic cavity, a situation often occurring in practical applications, is presented. The analysis consisted in imposing a moderate temperature difference between two isothermal plates, and taking the other pair of plates as perfectly adiabatic. The average Nusselt number obtained is compared with empirical results described in the literature. Numerical solutions are obtained over a Rayleigh number range from 104 to 106. The equations have been resolved by a finite element technique by ANSYS/FLOTRAN software. The results indicate that there is good agreement with other data available in the literature. The maximum discrepancy which occurred at higher Rayleigh numbers, is small from the practical point of view.