Natural Convection Flow in Sinusoidally Heated Porous Enclosure

Natural convection flow in a cavity filled with a porous media is investigated numerically using Brinkman–extended Darcy model. The flow is caused by heating at lower half of the left vertical wall and cooling at upper half of the right vertical wall with the horizontal and rest of walls are insulated. The temperature of heating is varying by sinusoidal profile.   The problem is analyzed for different values of Rayleigh number 103 ≤ Ra ≤ 106 and different values of aspect ratio 1≤ Ar ≤ 4. The numerical results show that the heat transfer is mainly due to the conduction at low Rayleigh numbers Ra ≤ 106. The convection becomes gradually dominant as the Rayleigh number increases and as the aspect ratio decreases. Heat transfer increases with increasing Rayleigh number Ra and enhanced at aspect ratio Ar = 2, when the convection regime is dominated.