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Transport in Porous Media, Vol.88, No.3, 357-368, 2011
Effect of Conduction in Bottom Wall on Darcy-B,nard Convection in a Porous Enclosure
Conjugate natural convection-conduction heat transfer in a square porous enclosure with a finite-wall thickness is studied numerically in this article. The bottom wall is heated and the upper wall is cooled while the verticals walls are kept adiabatic. The Darcy model is used in the mathematical formulation for the porous layer and the COMSOL Multiphysics software is applied to solve the dimensionless governing equations. The governing parameters considered are the Rayleigh number (100 a parts per thousand currency sign Ra a parts per thousand currency sign 1000), the wall to porous thermal conductivity ratio (0.44 a parts per thousand currency sign K (r) a parts per thousand currency sign 9.90) and the ratio of wall thickness to its height (0.02 a parts per thousand currency sign D a parts per thousand currency sign 0.4). The results are presented to show the effect of these parameters on the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics. It is found that the number of contrarotative cells and the strength circulation of each cell can be controlled by the thickness of the bottom wall, the thermal conductivity ratio and the Rayleigh number. It is also observed that increasing either the Rayleigh number or the thermal conductivity ratio or both, and decreasing the thickness of the bounded wall can increase the average Nusselt number for the porous enclosure.