Due to the operating temperature from 900 K to 1300 K produced by the concentrating ratio over 2000 in solar parabolic dish-engine system, the natural convection heat loss driven by the buoyancy force of air contributes an important role in the energy loss of cavity receiver. 3-D numerical simulations were performed and the results are analyzed from the novel viewpoint of field synergy principle (FSP) in order to study the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics in natural convection heat loss of cavity receiver. The effects of geometric parameters, including the inclination angle, aperture size, aperture position and cavity geometric shape on the natural convection heat loss of cavity receiver were examined. The FSP analysis on the simulation results demonstrates that FSP can well explain the reduction mechanism for natural convection heat loss of cavity receiver because the smaller inner production of velocity vector and temperature gradient always corresponds to the lower Nusselt number occurred in the cases with lager inclination angle, smaller aperture size, lower aperture position and frustum-cylinder cavity, respectively. Therefore, the reducing natural convection heat loss attributes to the weakening synergy between velocity vector and temperature gradient. In addition, the local heat transfer performance is studied by the presented distributions of heat transferred via fluid motion, where more interesting natural convection heat loss characteristics of cavity receiver and the detailed explanations were provided. The results of this work offer benefits for the development of theory and technique about reducing natural convection heat loss of cavity receiver. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.