Natural convection of Al2O3-water nanofluid with variable properties in a square enclosure with heat source and heat sink on the vertical walls

The buoyancy-driven fluid flow and heat transfer in a square cavity with partially active side walls filled The buoyancy-driven fluid flow and heat transfer in a square cavity with partially active side walls filled which the length is equal to half of height and width is 0.1 of height respectively so that it contains Al_2 O_3–water nanofluid which variable properties, has been investigated numerically. The active parts of the left and the right side walls of the cavity are maintained at temperatures Th and Tc , respectively, with Th>Tc . The enclosure’s top and bottom walls as well as the inactive parts of its side walls are kept insulated. The governing equations in the two-dimensional space are discretized using the control volume method. A proper upwinding scheme is employed to obtain stabilized solutions. Using the developed code, a parametric study is undertaken, and the effects of the Rayleigh number, the locations of the active parts of the side walls and the volume fraction of the nanoparticles on the fluid flow and heat transfer inside the cavity are investigated. It is observed from the results that the average Nusselt number increase with increasing the Rayleigh number and decrease with increasing the volume fraction of the nanoparticles. Moreover, the maximum average Nusselt number for the high and the low Rayleigh numbers occur for the bottom–middle locations of the thermally active parts, respectively.