Natural convection of non-Newtonian power law fluids in a shallow horizontal rectangular cavity uniformly heated from below

Analytical and numerical study is conducted for two-dimensional steady-state buoyancy driven flow of a non-Newtonian power law fluid confined in a shallow rectangular horizontal cavity uniformly heated from below, while its short vertical rigid sides are considered adiabatic. The effect of the non-Newtonian behaviour on the onset of convection, fluid flow, temperature field, and heat transfer is examined. A closed approximate analytical solution is developed on the basis of the parallel flow assumption and the obtained results are validated numerically by solving the full governing equations.