NATURAL-CONVECTION IN RECTANGULAR ENCLOSURES WITH PARTIAL HEATING AND COOLING

The flow and heat transfer in partially heated and partially cooled cavities were numerically analyzed. Using the control volume approach, a computer program based on SIMPLE algorithm was developed. A square enclosure with variable size heater and cooler on the vertical walls was considered. Computations were carried out to investigate the effects of heater and cooler size on the heat transfer rate. It was observed that for a given cooler size, the mean Nusselt number decreases with increasing heater size. On the other hand, for a given heater size, the mean Nusselt number increases with increasing cooler size. For all Rayleigh numbers considered, the same behavior was observed.