Interaction of Rayleigh-Bénard Convection and Oscillatory Flows [code 268949]

Abstract

The effects of oscillatory flow structures on transient convective heat transfer in an air-filled shallow enclosure with a vibrating side wall are investigated. Oscillatory flows and Rayleigh-Bénard convection have been extensively studied separately by using theoretical and experimental methods. To our best knowledge, the influence of oscillatory flows on classical Rayleigh-Bénard convection has not been studied. In the present study, fluid motion is driven by the periodic vibration of the enclosure side wall. The vertical walls of enclosure are adiabatic while the bottom wall is isothermally heated and the top wall is kept at an initial temperature. The fully compressible forms of the Navier-Stokes and energy equations are considered to compute the interaction of oscillatory and gravitational flow fields. A control-volume method based, explicit time-marching Flux-Corrected Transport (FCT) Algorithm is used to simulate the transport phenomena in the enclosure. The results of a test case simulation with stationary walls are compared with the existing literature for the validation of the algorithm utilized. The oscillatory fluid motion significantly changes the transient behavior of the thermal transport in the enclosure compared to the pure Rayleigh-Bénard convection. © 2014, Begell House Inc. All rights reserved.