Natural Convective Heat Transfer From a Horizontal Rectangular Isothermal Element Imbedded in a Plane Adiabatic Surface With a Parallel Adiabatic Covering Surface

Natural convective heat transfer from a horizontal flat rectangular isothermal heated element imbedded in a flat rectangular adiabatic surface has been numerically studied. The surface of the heated rectangular element is in the same plane as the surface of the surrounding adiabatic material. A rectangular flat horizontal adiabatic surface is mounted parallel to and at a relatively short distance from the heated element. The heated element is facing upwards with the covering surface above the element. For the conditions considered laminar, transitional, and turbulent flows can occur. The flow has been assumed to be steady. Constant fluid properties have been assumed except for the density change with temperature which gives rise to the buoyancy forces. This was dealt with using the Boussinesq approach. To obtain the solution, the commercial CFD solver ANSYS FLUENT^© was used to numerically solve the governing equations. The k-epsilon turbulence model was employed with account being taken of buoyancy force effects. The effects of the dimensionless distance of the rectangular covering surface from the heated rectangular element and of the ratio of the side lengths of the rectangular element on the variation of the Nusselt number with Rayleigh number have been examined.