Natural Convection Inside a Square Cavity Heated From Below and Symmetrically Cooled at Both Sides: Effects of Various Dirichlet Boundary Conditions at the Bottom Wall

A numerical study is performed to investigate the steady laminar natural convection flow in a square cavity with uniformly and non-uniformly heated bottom wall, and adiabatic top wall maintaining constant temperature of cold vertical walls. A penalty finite element method with bi-quadratic rectangular elements has been used to solve the governing mass, momentum and energy equations. The numerical procedure adopted in the present study yields consistent performance over the range of parameters (Rayleigh number Ra, 10³ ≤ Ra ≤ 10⁵ and Prandtl number Pr, 0.7 ≤ Pr ≤ 10) with respect to continuous and discontinuous Dirichlet boundary conditions. Non-uniform heating of the bottom wall produces greater heat transfer rate at the center of the bottom wall than uniform heating case for all Rayleigh numbers but average Nusselt number shows overall lower heat transfer rate for non-uniform heating case. Critical Rayleigh numbers for conduction dominant heat transfer cases have been obtained.