Title: Numerical study of transient flow within a horizontal cylinder heated from below and cooled from the top

Authors: S.S. Leong

Addresses: School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

Abstract: The time dependent natural convection in a horizontal circular cylinder, heated from below and cooled from above, is computed using the stream function-vorticity formulation for the two-dimensional equations of motion and energy. The fluid studied has a Prandtl number of 7. The range of Rayleigh numbers (Ra) presented in this paper is 580 ≤ Ra ≤ 100,000. For the range of Ra presented, the initial motion consists of four cells. As Ra is increased, a large single cell with two weak cells is formed. At low Rayleigh numbers, steady state solutions are obtained. At higher values of Ra, the flow becomes unsteady. The temperature, streamlines, relative total Kinetic Energy (KE) and Nusselt number are presented as functions of time.

Keywords: natural convection; Rayleigh-Benard convection; transient flow; unsteady flow; finite difference; numerical simulation; transient flow; horizontal cylinders; heat transfer.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2006.010773

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2006 Vol.6 No.6, pp.327 - 334

Published online: 30 Aug 2006 *

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