Natural Convection Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Enclosures with Varying Aspect Ratios (CFD)

Buoyancy driven natural convection in enclosures has wide range of engineering applications in heat transfer processes. The study of fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics in enclosures has significant importance towards thermal management and optimal design of the system. Limited studies are available on the numerical simulation of 3-Dimensional enclosures with varying aspect ratios (H/L). Heat transfer characteristics has been investigated in 3D enclosure with hot and cold surface by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulating at low (0.125 ≤ AR ≤ 50) and high (51 ≤ AR ≤ 150) aspect ratios. CFD simulations have been performed with different fluids (fluid 1, fluid 2 and fluid 3) at temperature range of 20K ≤ ΔT ≤ 100K and Prandtl number range of 0.01 ≤ Pr ≤ 4200. The predicted profiles for velocities and heat transfer coefficients are presented. Correlations for Nusselt number based on predicted findings have been developed to study heat transfer characteristics.