Natural convection of Cu–water nanofluid in a cavity with partially active side walls

Abstract

The buoyancy-driven fluid flow and heat transfer in a square cavity with partially active side walls filled with Cu–water nanofluid is investigated numerically. The active parts of the left and the right side walls of the cavity are maintained at temperatures ThTh and TcTc, respectively, with Th>TcTh>Tc. The enclosure’s top and bottom walls as well as the inactive parts of its side walls are kept insulated. The governing equations in the two-dimensional space are discretized using the control volume method. A proper upwinding scheme is employed to obtain stabilized solutions. Using the developed code, a parametric study is undertaken, and the effects of the Rayleigh number, the locations of the active parts of the side walls, and the volume fraction of the nanoparticles on the fluid flow and heat transfer inside the cavity are investigated. It is observed from the results that the average Nusselt number increases with increasing both the Rayleigh number and the volume fraction of the nanoparticles. Moreover, the maximum average Nusselt number for the high and the low Rayleigh numbers occur for the bottom–middle and the middle–middle locations of the thermally active parts, respectively.