Entropy Generation During Natural Convection in a Porous Cavity: Effect of Thermal Boundary Conditions

2012 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanmay Basak ◽  
Ram Satish Kaluri ◽  
A. R. Balakrishnan
Author(s):  
Ram Satish Kaluri ◽  
Tanmay Basak ◽  
A. R. Balakrishnan

Natural convection is a widely occurring phenomena which has important applications in material processing, energy storage devices, electronic cooling, building ventilation etc. The concept of ‘entropy generation minimization’, which is a thermodynamic approach for optimization, may be very useful in designing efficient thermal systems. In the current study, entropy generation in steady laminar natural convection flow in a square cavity is studied with following isothermal boundary conditions: (1) Bottom wall is uniformly heated (2) Bottom wall is sinusoidally heated. The side walls are maintained cold and the top wall is maintained adiabatic. The thermal boundary condition in non-uniform heating case (case 2) is such that the dimensionless average temperature of the bottom wall is equal to that of uniform heating case (case 1). The prime objective of this work is to investigate the influence of uniform and non-uniform heating on entropy generation. The governing mass, momentum and energy equations are solved using Galerkin finite element method. Streamlines, isotherms, contour maps of entropy generation due to heat transfer and fluid friction are studied for Pr = 0.01 (molten metals) and 7 (water) in range of Ra = 103–105. Detailed analysis on the effect of uniform and non-uniform thermal boundary conditions on entropy generation due to heat transfer and fluid friction has been presented. Also, the average Bejan’s number which indicates the relative dominance of entropy generation due to heat transfer or fluid friction and the total entropy generation are studied for each case.


RSC Advances ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 17519-17530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Wu ◽  
Gang Wang

Natural convection in an inclined porous cavity with positively or negatively inclined angles is studied numerically for time-periodic boundary conditions on the left side wall and partially active thermal boundary conditions on the right wall.


2017 ◽  
Vol 377 ◽  
pp. 189-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Sankar ◽  
S. Kiran ◽  
G.K. Ramesh ◽  
Oluwole Daniel Makinde

Natural convection from the linearly heated inner and/or outer walls of a vertical annular cavity has been numerically investigated. The bottom wall is uniformly heated and top cylindrical wall is thermally insulated. In this analysis, we considered two different thermal boundary conditions, namely case (I) and case (II) to understand the effect of non-uniform heating of inner and/or outer walls on the convective flow and subsequently the local and global heat transfer rate. For case (I), the inner and outer walls are heated linearly, while the linearly heated inner wall and cooled outer wall is considered in case (II). An implicit finite difference scheme is applied to solve the model equations of the problem. The numerical simulations in terms of streamlines and isotherms, local and global Nusselt numbers are presented to illustrate the effects of Rayleigh number and non-uniform thermal boundary conditions for a fixed Prandtl number of Pr = 0.7.


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