Numerical study of mixed convection within porous square cavities using Bejan's heatlines: Effects of thermal aspect ratio and thermal boundary conditions

The present numerical study deals with mixed convection flows within square enclosures filled with porous media. The influence of various thermal boundary conditions on bottom and side walls based on thermal aspect ratio (A) is investigated for a wide range of parameters (1 ≤ Re ≤ 100, 0.015 ≤ Pr ≤ 7.2, 10 -5 ≤ Da ≤ 10 -3 and 10 3 ≤ Gr ≤ 10 5). A penalty finite element method with bi-quadratic elements has been used to investigate the results in terms of streamlines, isotherms and heatlines and average Nusselt numbers. Lid driven effect is dominant at low Darcy number (Da = 10 -5), whereas buoyancy driven effect is dominant at high Darcy numbers (Da = 10 -4 and Da = 10 -3) for Re = 1. Asymmetric pattern is observed in isotherms and heatlines for Re = 100. It is found that thermal gradient is high at the center of the bottom wall for A = 0.1 due to large dense heatlines at that zone and that is low for A = 0.9 irrespective of Re, Pr and Gr. Overall heat transfer rates are higher for A = 0.1 compared to other thermal aspect ratios (A = 0.5, A = 0.9) irrespective of Darcy number, Prandtl number and Reynolds number. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.