Abstract
In this paper, we presented a numerical study of the natural convection and heat transfer performance in a wavy wall cavity filled with a heat-generating porous medium and nanofluid. The single-phase model is used for modeling the nanofluid. The nanofluid within the cavity is taken as water-based nanofluid consisting of copper nanoparticles while the Brinkman model is applied for the porous medium. The sinusoidal temperature distribution is imposed on the left wall while the right wavy wall is maintained at a constant cold temperature. Also, a sinusoidal shape for the right wall is considered. To simplify the effort in matching the grid mesh with the wavy wall of the enclosure, we mapped the computational domain onto a rectangular shaped enclosure using a nonlinear axis transformation. Wide ranges of the governing parameter are considered, i.e., the amplitude parameter is varied from 0 to 0.25, the number of undulations is varied from 0 to 5, the heat generation/absorption parameter is varied from -5 to 5, and the angle of inclination is taken from alpha = 0 degrees to alpha = 270 degrees. The obtained results show that the heat transfer increases with the increase in the volume fraction of nanoparticles and the amplitude of the wavy surface while it decreases with increasing the internal heat generation/absorption parameter and the number of undulations. Also, the decrease in the internal heat generation/absorption parameter leads to an increase in the horizontal and vertical velocities.