1

Proceedings of the 22
th

National and 11
th
International
ISHMT-ASME Heat and Mass Transfer Conference
December 28-31, 2013, IIT Kharagpur, India



HMTC1300281



NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF NATURAL CONVECTION FLOW IN A POROUS RIGHT-ANGLED
TRIANGULAR ENCLOSURE WITH NANOFLUID


Saurabh Bhardwaj, Amaresh Dalal*
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Guwahati 781 039, India
*Email: amaresh@iitg.ernet.in



ABSTRACT

Natural convection heat transfer and fluid flow behavior of
nanofluids in a two-dimensional porous right-angled triangular
enclosure having undulation on the left wall with nanofluid is
analyzed numerically. Darcy-Forchheimer model is used to
simulate the momentum transfer in the porous medium. The stream
function-vorticity equations are solved using finite-difference
technique. The computations are done on a structured non-
orthogonal body fitted mesh. Standard QUICK scheme is used for
convective term discretization and diffusive term is discretized
using central difference scheme. In this study, the effect of
Rayleigh number (10
3
Ra 10
5
), Darcy number(10
-4
Da 10
-2
)
and undulations on the left wall is investigated on the heat transfer
and fluid flow. Solid volume fraction parameter of nanofluids is
taken as = 0, 0.1 and 0.2. The nanofluids taken in this study is
water-Cu. The results are presented in the form of streamlines,
isotherms, local Nusselt number and average Nusselt number.

INTRODUCTION

Natural Convection inside an enclosure saturated with porous media
is well known phenomenon due to its wide application in engineering
field. Many applications can be found out in several books: Nield and
Bejan[1], Vafai[2] and Bejan et al.[3]. In most of the engineering
application, natural convection inside porous enclosure saturated
with porous media having undulation can be seen e.g. regenerative
heat exchanger. The other applications of natural convection heat
transfer in porous media are also found in solar power collectors,
air saturated fibrous insulation material surrounding a heated
body, pollutant dispersal in aquifiers, storage of nuclear waste in
deep geological repositories and heat loss from underground
energy storage systems.
A new technology to improve heat transfer is to use solid particles in
the base fluid, termed as nanofluids. Nanofluids refers to fluids in
which nano scale particles are suspended in the base fluid. Choi first
introduced this concept and suggested that the presence of nanoparticles
in the nanofluid increases its thermal conductivity and therefore
enhances the heat transfer characteristics of the nanofluids. Abu-Nada
and Oztop [4] have analysed the effects of inclination angle on
natural convection heat transfer and fluid flow in a two
dimensional enclosure filled with Cu-nanofluid. Inclination angle
can be a controlling parameter for nano-fluid filled enclosure. The
problem of steady natural convection heat transfer in a
differentially-heated enclosure filled with a CuO-EG-Water
nanofluid was investigated using different variable thermal
conductivity and variable viscosity models by Abu-Nada and
Chamkha [5]. Results for a wide range of Rayleigh numbers,
volume fractions of nanoparticles and enclosure aspect ratios were
presented. Nasrin et al. [6] have studied the influence of Prandtl
number and tilted angle of a partially heated inclined rectangular
cavity on free convection flow phenomena with Soret and Dufour
coefficients. Water-Al
2
O
3
nanofluid has been taken in this study. It
is found that the structure of the fluid streamlines, isotherms and
iso-concentrations within the enclosure is found to significantly
depend upon the Prandtl number, Pr and Streamfunction, and
Al
2
O
3
nanoparticles with the highest Pr and the lowest are
established to be most effective in enhancing performance of heat
transfer rate than the rate of mass transfer.

Basak and Chamka [7] have analysed natural convection of
nanofluids with uniform or non-uniform heating of bottom wall
using Galerkin finite element method. It is observed that flow
strength as well as convective heat flow are dominant for water at
the center of the cavity. Steady-state free convection heat transfer