Abstract
The effects of internal heat generation or absorption on heat transfer and fluid flow within a partially heated square cavity for both homogeneous medium and porous medium are investigated in the current study. The Darcy-Brinkman and the energy transport equations are used to predict the heat transfer process in the porous medium when it is generated by heating at the bottom walls of the cavity. Numerical results are presented and analyzed in terms of fluid flow, thermal field structures, as well as average Nusselt number profiles over a wide range of dimensionless quantities [internal Rayleigh number (Ra-I) varied between -10(6) and 10(6), heat source length, porosity coefficient values, and Darcy number in the range 10(-5) to 10(-2)]. The effect of heat generation and absorption in the homogenous medium and porous medium is also discussed. It was seen that an optimal heat transfer rate is obtained for both high internal Rayleigh number and high porosity coefficient (epsilon = 0.8 and Ra-I = 10(6)), whereas a lower thermal rate was found in the first computations for (epsilon = 0.4 and Ra-I = 10(5)). The correlations of heat transfer rates in both homogenous and porous medium cases are established in the current investigation.