Numerical Study of Natural Convection in a Partitioned Cavity

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of insulated horizontal baffle placed at the hot wall of a differentially heated square cavity. The vertical walls are at different temperatures while the horizontal walls are adiabatic. In our formulation of governing equations, mass, momentum and the energy equations are applied to the cavity and the baffles. To solve the governing differential equations a finite volume code based on Patankar’s SIMPLER method is utilized [1]. The Results are presented for Rayleigh number from 10⁴ up to 10⁶ and are in form of streamlines, isotherms and Nusselt number. The baffle causes that at low Rayleigh number the horizontal isotherms are replaced by nearly vertical ones, specially around the baffle. Also it is found that thermal boundary layers are thickened, and the temperature gradients at the cold wall are reduced from their values for the case without baffle and this implies that a reduction in the heat transfer through the cavity occurs.