Thermal Management for Natural Convection within Porous Enclosures

Abstract

Various simulations and numerical studies have been carried out for free convection heat transfer of a square enclosure filled with porous matrix for sinusoidal and uniform heating conditions also varying Rayleigh values from 1 to 500 by using a mathematical finite element simulation. The porous media chosen for this research is saturated water medium (H₂O).The enclosure properties have been predefined as follows: The top and base walls of the enclosure are made adiabatic, whereas the right wall is kept at a steady cold temperature. The hot left wall is treated at varying temperatures. The Nusselt values as well as mean Nusselt values have been quantified for the aforementioned values. It has been observed that the mean Nusselt values rise with the surge in Rayleigh values. For the Rayleigh value of 500, we found that uniform heating condition showed larger values of streamline function when compared to Sinusoidal heating conditions. These simulations were performed by considering a Solar Fresnel as a real-world example. We hope that scholars and engineers collectively working on enhancing or aspiring to numerically model the thermal exchange through a square enclosure filled porous matrix will benefit from the information provided in this research article.