Buoyancy-driven fluid flow and heat transfer in a square cavity with a wavy baffle-Meshless numerical analysis

The meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method is implemented to simulate the buoyancy-driven flow and heat transfer in a differentially-heated enclosure having a baffle attached to its higher temperature side wall. To execute the proposed numerical treatment, the stream function-vorticity formulation is employed and a unity weighting function is applied for the weak form of the governing equations. In this meshless numerical approach, the field variables are approximated using the MLS interpolation technique. Being attested through comparing the results of two test case simulations with the results of either an analytical or a conventional numerical approach, the MLPG method is applied to investigate the buoyancy-driven flow and heat transfer in the baffled cavity. The present analyses involve a parametric study to implicate the effects of the baffle undulation number, amplitude, location on the wall, and the system Rayleigh number. The investigation reveals the eminent participation of the baffle in transferring heat from the hot wall. The analyses disclose an increase of the hot wall average Nusselt number by elevating the location of the baffle on the hot wall. This average Nusselt number descends with increasing the baffle amplitude. The cold wall average Nusselt number increases as the baffle number of undulation augments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.