Natural convection heat transfer from an isothermal horizontal square cylinder

Laminar natural convection from a horizontal isothermal square cylinder is numerically investigated. The study covered a range of Rayleigh number, Ra from 10(3) to 10(6). A computer program is developed to solve the continuity, momentum and thermal energy equations together with their boundary conditions by using a finite volume method. Streamlines and isotherms were generated to describe the flow around the square cylinder. The local and average Nusselt numbers are calculated and plotted over the four sides of the square cylinder. The numerical results were correlated and compared with previous work. (C) 2016 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).