• DECEMBER 2019

Natural Convection in a Square Cavity

 Results
topwall
• Natural convection is a mass and heat transfer process
driven by density differences in the fluid arising from
non-uniformities in the temperature field.
• In this example, the temperature difference between
the hotwall and coldwall drives the convection of air in
the cavity.

coldwall
hotwall
• Air close to hotwall heats up, becomes less dense and
rises to topwall under the action of the buoyance
force.
• Air next to coldwall cools down, become denser and
descends to bottomwall.
• These oppositely moving layers of air along hotwall
and coldwall result in a circular pattern of air motion bottomwall
inside the cavity. Temperature distribution in the square
cavity due to natural convection
Results
• Velocity vector plot shows the circular motion of air driven by buoyancy force.

Velocity vectors colored by velocity magnitude, m/s Velocity vectors colored by temperature, K
Appendix
Natural Convection
Boussinesq Approach
• In natural convection, non-dimensional Rayleigh Number is introduce to
characterize laminar and turbulent regimes in these types of flows.
• Rayleigh Number is defined as:
𝑔βΔT𝐿3 𝜌
𝑅𝑎 =
𝜇𝛼

• Respective values o the right-hand-side for this example are :

‐ 𝑔 is gravitational acceleration = 9.81 𝑚/𝑠 2
‐ 𝛽 is thermal expansion coefficient = 1/ 𝑇𝑜𝑝 = 0.00344827 (1/K)
‐ 𝑇𝑜𝑝 is operating temperature = 290 K
‐ ΔT is the temperature difference = 15 K
‐ L is the size of the cavity = 0.1 m
‐ 𝜌 is the density of the fluid = 1.1405 𝑘𝑔/𝑚3
‐ 𝜇 is the viscosity of the fluid = 1.7894e-05 𝑘𝑔/𝑚𝑠
‐ 𝛼 is the thermal diffusivity = 2.11e-05 𝑚2 /𝑠
• 𝑅𝑎 < 108 indicates a buoyancy-induced turbulent flow.
• 𝑅𝑎 > 108 suggests the flow is turbulent.
• In a natural convection laminar flow, the Boussinesq Model treats density as constant in all equations except for the buoyancy term
in the momentum equation.