NATURAL-CONVECTION IN OPEN CAVITIES AND SLOTS

Abstract

The present work is concerned with natural convection from open cavities or heated plates attached with parallel vertical strips. The bottom of the cavity is heated, and the vertical walls are assumed adiabatic. Numerical results are presented for steady, laminar natural convection for the geometry described. Effects of Rayleigh numbers from 1 X 10(3) to 1 X 10(7), inclination angles from 10 degrees to 90 degrees, and aspect ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 are investigated for a fixed Prandtl number (0.7). It is found that the average Nusselt number is not very sensitive to the inclination angle. Flow becomes unstable at high Rayleigh numbers and at low inclination angles. Flow pattern and heat transfer results are presented and discussed