ARTICLE:

• THREE-DIMENSIONAL DRIVEN-CAVITY FLOWS WITH A MODERATE TEMPERATURE GRADIENT  download article

Henor Artur de Souza
Departamento de Engenharia de Controle e automação e Técnicas Fundamentais, Escola de Minas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Campus Universitário, Morro do Cruzeiro, 35.400-000 - Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, BRAZIL

Eliana Ferreira Rodrigues
Departamento de Engenharia de Controle e automação e Técnicas Fundamentais, Escola de Minas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Campus Universitário, Morro do Cruzeiro, 35.400-000 - Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, BRAZIL

ABSTRACT

A method for the analysis of natural convection inside a cubic cavity, a situation often occurring in practical applications, is presented. The analysis consisted in imposing a moderate temperature difference between two isothermal plates, and taking the other pair of plates as perfectly adiabatic. The average Nusselt number obtained is compared with empirical results described in the literature. Numerical solutions are obtained over a Rayleigh number range from 10⁴ to 10⁶. The equations have been resolved by a finite element technique by ANSYS/FLOTRAN software. The results indicate that there is good agreement with other data available in the literature. The maximum discrepancy which occurred at higher Rayleigh numbers, is small from the practical point of view.

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