Natural Convection in a Cavity with Mutually Orthogonal Thermally Active Baffles

Natural convective cooling of two mutually orthogonal thermally active baffles placed inside an air filled square cavity is studied numerically. The active baffles may be either isothermal or heat generating. The flow is assumed to be two-dimensional. The finite difference method using alternating direction implicit method together with successive over relaxation technique is employed to solve the governing coupled nonlinear equations. Computations have been carried out for fixed values of Grashof number and Prandtl number. The effects of different locations of the baffles on the heat transfer characteristics are discussed in terms of steady state isotherm, streamline plots and overall Nusselt number. It is found that a better overall heat transfer can be achieved by placing one of the plates far away from the core region of the cavity in the case of isothermally heated baffles, whereas, no significant change occurs in the case of discretely heat-generating one.