Study of free convection in a porous square cavity using two-energy equation models

• Main Author: Paulo Henrique Salles de Carvalho
• Other Authors: Marcelo José Santos de Lemos
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica 2013
• Subjects: Materiais porosos; Transferência de calor; Escoamento turbulento; Turbulência; Escoamento através de meio poroso; Mecânica dos fluidos; Física
• Online Access: http://www.bd.bibl.ita.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=2766

In this study the influence of physical properties on heat transfer between the fluid and solid phases for laminar and turbulent flow in a square cavity filled with porous material, heated by one side and cooled by the opposite one is investigated. In order to simulate flow and heat transfer between the phases models, one and two-energy-equation models are used. The transport equations are discretized using the control volume method and the system of algebraic equations is relaxed via the SIMPLE algorithm. Validations were perfomed first for the case of clean cavity, using Laminar and High Reynolds Turbulent model, and the results are in agreement with the existing literature. In the case of porous cavities, simulation runs were performed using the 1EEM and 2EEM. Overall, this study showed that as porosity increases, the value of the average Nusselt at hot wall, for the same Ram, decreases. It is also shown that the average Nusselt decreases, from a critical Rayleigh , as the ratio between the thermal conductivities of the phases increases. Comparisons were made between both energy models and 2EEM shown smaller results for average Nusselt as ks/kf increases. Also found that the critical Rayleigh depends directly on the ratio ks/kf, being larger as it also grows. Still object of this work, it has been discovered that as the porosity decreases and the ratio between thermal conductivities increases, the turbulence within cavity increases as well. In general, the results and analysis obtained by this work can be used in real engineering situations where the porous cavities may be used.