Bejan's heatline analysis of natural convection in right-angled triangular enclosures: Effects of aspect-ratio and thermal boundary conditions

Natural convection in right-angled triangular enclosures with various top angles (φ=15°, 30°, 45°) is studied in detail via heat flow analysis for various uniform isothermal and linear isothermal heating thermal boundary conditions. Detailed analysis on the effects of aspect-ratio and thermal boundary conditions on the fluid and heat flow inside the triangular enclosures have been carried out for a range of fluids (Pr = 7.2, 1000, 0.015) within Ra = 103-105. Interesting features of heat flow patterns under various thermal boundary conditions are 'visualized' by heatlines. The effect of increase in φ of triangular enclosures is such that the maximum heat flux at the top vertex decreases and the thermal mixing in cavity increases with the increase in φ. It is found that, the fluid in the lower corners is adequately heated in presence of hot right wall compared to that in left wall heating cases. Further, the heat transfer characteristics, in terms of local and average Nusselt numbers, indicate that isothermal heating cases exhibit exponential decrease in Nul whereas linear heating cases interestingly show local intermediate maxima. Also, various qualitative and quantitative features of Nu and Nu are adequately explained based on heatlines. Finally, the correlations for Nul and Ra are obtained for various fluid with all heating situations. © 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.