An Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Natural Convective Heat Transfer in a Square Cavity With Five Discrete Heat Sources

This paper provides an experimental and numerical investigation of natural convection in a square cavity. The square cavity is full of air (Pr = 0.71) and contains four heat sources of height hW, positioned symmetrically on the vertical walls of the cavity with a fifth heat source of height hB, located in the center of the bottom cavity wall. Two configurations are analyzed for Rayleigh numbers ranging from 1.00 × 104 to 1.00 × 105: configuration 1 has four cold sources located on the vertical cavity wall and configuration 2 has two hot and two cold sources located on the vertical cavity walls. An analysis of the holographic interferograms, numerical isotherms, streamlines, and velocity maps obtained demonstrates an increased development of natural convective heat transfer in configuration 1.