Experimental study of transient natural convection in a rectangular porous enclosure with heated from side

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study transient natural convection in a porous medium filling an enclosure heated from one side and cooled from the other. Two porous medias are considered consisting of 2 mm and 8mm spheres. The aspect ratio of the enclosure, H / L, was fixed at 0.67. The results indicate that heat transfer increases with porosity for the same Rayleigli number. The time needed to penetrate the porous medium from the hot isothermal wall to reach a steady state is reduced at lower porosities. The variation of Nusselt number with time has also been studied in this experiment.