Numerical Modeling of a Natural Convection Problem in a Porous Medium

VENIER, CÉSAR; TERUEL, FEDERICO; DARI, ENZO

Rosario

Congreso; XIX Congreso sobre Métodos Numéricos y sus Aplicaciones; 2011

The study of problems ruled by natural convection through obstacles is relevant in manyareas of engineering. We found examples where the obstacles can be modeled explicitly (eg. heatexchangers) and examples where to consider the obstacles as a porous medium is appropriate (eg.core and winding of a power transformer). So, it is interesting to improve the understanding of naturalconvection around obstacles both for comparison with the case without barriers and to evaluate thebehavior of porous media models.In this paper, two-dimensional numerical solutions for a variant of the classical problem of naturalconvection in a square cavity (fixed temperature on the vertical walls and adiabatic horizontal ones)are presented. The cavity was divided into two regions separated by an imaginary vertical line. In theleft region, the flow circulates freely. In the right region, the flow circulates through a mediumconsisting of an array of square rods and vertical channels (porous medium).Results for different Rayleigh numbers in the laminar regime and for different geometries of theporous medium are presented. This allow to quantify the behavior of the phenomenon in terms of theporous medium parameters such as permeability and porosity. A stabilized finite element code is usedto carry out the simulations.