Conjugate heat transfer in porous triangular enclosures with thick bottom wall

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the conjugate heat transfer via natural convection and conduction in a triangular enclosure filled with a porous medium. Design/methodology/approach - Darcy flow model was used to write governing equations with Boussinesq approximation. The transformed governing equations are solved numerically using a finite difference technique. It is assumed that the enclosure consists of a conducting bottom wall of finite thickness, an adiabatic (insulated) vertical wall and a cooled inclined wall. Findings - Flow patterns, temperature and heat transfer were presented at different dimensionless thickness of the bottom wall, h, from 0.05 to 0.3, different thermal conductivity ratio between solid material and fluid, k, from 0.44 to 283 and Rayleigh numbers, Ra, from 100 to 1000. It is found that both thermal conductivity ratio and thickness of the bottom wall can be used as control parameters for heat transport and flow field. Originality/value - It is believed that this is the first paper on conduction-natural convection in porous media filled triangular enclosures with thick wall. In the last years, most of the researchers focused on regular geometries such as rectangular or square cavity bounded by thick wall.