NATURAL CONVECTION IN VERTICAL CAVITIES WITH PARTIALLY FILLED HEAT-GENERATING POROUS MEDIA

Abstract

A numerical study was performed to analyze the steady natural convection heat transfer in a two-dimensional partially filled rectangular cavity with a uniform heat-generating saturated porous medium. The boundary conditions were: two isothermal walls at different temperatures and two horizontal adiabatic walls. The study covered the range of 10³ < Ra < 10⁷ and 10^-3 < Da < 10^-8. The aspect ratio A was varied from 0.5 to 20, the filling factor F from 0.0 to 1.0, the dimensionless porous layer location X_p from 0.1 to 0.5 (symmetry line), and the asymmetric cooling θ_h from 0.0 to 0.5, It was found that the flow and temperature fields interact in different ways depending on various parameters (Ra, Da, A, X_p, θ_h and F).