Natural Convection in a Partitioned Cubic Enclosure

Numerical solutions are obtained for fluid flow and heat transfer in a cubic enclosure with a vertical adiabatic partition. The two zones of the enclosure are connected by a single rectangular opening. The partition is oriented parallel to the isothermal sidewalls, one of which is heated and the other cooled while the remaining walls are adiabatic. Results have been presented for air for the Rayleigh numbers in the range 10⁴−10⁷. The width of the opening is held fixed while the height, relative to the enclosure height, is varied from 0.25 to 0.75. The effects of various parameters on the flow structure and heat transfer are investigated. The results of the three-dimensional simulation have also been compared with those for the corresponding two-dimensional configurations.