Natural convection with surface radiation in partially open cavities

The effects of side vent, aspect ratio and emissivity on natural convection, surface radiation heat transfer and volume flow in a side- vented open cavity, using air as the fluid medium are numerically investigated. The analysis has been done for a constant property fluid, with the Boussinesq approximation assumed to be valid. The full Navier-Stokes equations are considered in the vorticity-stream function (ω-ψ) form, and are solved using a finite volume based finite difference method. An important contribution from the present work is the introduction of the effects of vent, aspect ratio and emissivity on the mass flows across the openings in the cavity. Based on a large set of numerical data, correlations have been developed for average convective and radiation Nusselt numbers.