Abstract
Mixed convection heat transfer in open-ended channels with discrete heating from below is numerically studied when the convection cells remain attached to the heating elements. Two approaches an used: in method A, the computation domain covers the whole channel, while in method B, periodic conditions are imposed at the entrance and exit of a computation domain that is one wavelength long, Nu is calculated as functions of Ra (5 × 103 ≤ Ra ≤ 20 × 103) and of Pe (0.1 ≤ Pe ≤ 2.5). The results from two approaches show that method B can adequately be used to calculate heat transfer.