Effects of the Heat Transfer at the Side Walls on Natural Convection in Cavities

Numerical solutions are obtained for fluid flows and heat transfer rates for three-dimensional natural convection in rectangular enclosures. The effects of heat losses at the conducting side walls are investigated. The problem is related to the design of cavities suitable for visualizing the flow field. The computations cover Rayleigh numbers from 10³ to 10⁷ and the thermal conductance of side walls ranging from adiabatic to commonly used glazed walls. The effect of the difference between the ambient temperature and the average temperature of the two isothermal walls is discussed for both air and water-filled enclosures. The results reported in the paper allow quantitative evaluations of the effects of heat losses to the surroundings, which are important considerations in the design of a test cell.