Compounded natural convection enhancement in a vertical parallel-plate channel

This paper addresses the natural convection behavior of air when heated in single vertical, parallel-plate channels. To enhance the heat transfer two passive schemes are combined: (1) an equidistant short plate is inserted at the inlet and (2) two parallel, colinear insulated plates are appended at the exit. The channel plates are symmetrically heated with a uniform heat flux. The computational procedure is made by solving the full elliptic Navier - Stokes and energy equations with the finite-volume methodology in an I-type computational domain that is much larger than the physical domain. Within the framework of a "proof-of-concept" the controlling Grashof number based on the heated plate height ranges between 10(3) and 10(6). The numerical velocity, pressure and temperature fields are post-processed to compute the quantities of engineering interest such as the induced mass flow rate, the pressure at the channel mid-plane and the temperature along the plates. In addition, the Nusselt number and the average Nusselt number, both based on the heated plate height, are presented in graphical form. At the end, optimal channel configurations expressed in terms of the highest average Nusselt number are obtained for the pair of pre-assigned Grashof numbers. (c) 2007 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.