Cooling of a Vertically Oriented Air-Ventilated Square Cavity

This numerical analysis is performed to investigate the performance of mixed convection in a vertically oriented air-cooled square cavity. One inlet/outlet placement configuration, when both the inlet and the outlet ports are located at the same bottom side, is considered. The numerical approach is based on the finite volume method integrated in an in-house formulated FORTRAN code to computationally solve the two-dimensional Naiver Stock and energy equations with corresponding boundary conditions. The effect of aiding buoyancy on the flow field in a vertical downward laminar jet is examined for Richardson number (0 ≤ Ri ≤ 5) and Reynolds number (25 ≤ Re ≤ 100), with constant physical properties. The results indicate that the increase in Reynolds number increases significantly the average Nussle number; however, the increase in Richardson number slightly affect the amount of heat removal from the cavity. The fundamental nature of the resulting interaction between the buoyancy driven flow and the forced external flow demonstrated by the patterns of the streamlines and isotherms. Importantly, it is found that the placement configuration considered provides unfavorable flow and thermal distributions, and is not beneficial for heat elimination, for most of Reynolds and Richardson values.