Conjugated Natural Convection and Conduction Heat Transfer in a Square Cavity Containing a Porous Medium and a Solid Body Heat Source

Conjugated natural convection and conduction in a square cavity containing a porous medium with a solid body subjected to a uniform energy generation per unit volume is studied numerically in this paper. The vertical walls of the cavity are assumed to have constant temperatures (h T and c T) and the horizontal walls to be adiabatic. The effective parameters in this case are Ra and sb λ which appear in the nondimensionalized equations. Ra is a function of temperature difference between hot and cold walls، and sb λ is a parameter that depends on the energy generation in the porous medium. Nondimensionalized governing equations in both cases are obtained based on the darcy model; a control volume approach is used for solving these equations. The effect of the variation of two parameters، Ra and sb λ، on the heat transfer rate، fluid flow and isotherms are investigated. The results show that the maximum temperature decreases as Ra increases or sb λ decreases.