Abstract
Three-dimensional numerical simulations were conducted for the natural convection phenomena which occurs between an inner hot body and its outer enclosure. The physical model considered here is that a body of cubical shape is located at the center of an isothermal cooled spherical enclosure. Therefore, the fluid flow inside the enclosure results from the temperature difference between the cooled spherical enclosure and the heated cube. The governing equations are solved using a second-order accurate finite volume approach on a staggered grid system and multi-grid acceleration. Three different fluids, an air (Pr = 0.71), a water (Pr = 6.2) and the other a dielectric liquid (Pr = 25) are employed encompassing descriptive Rayleigh numbers Ra that range three orders of magnitude from 10(4) to 10(7). The conducted benchmark study leads to excellent accordance with previous findings. Detailed three-dimensional flow and thermal structures in the enclosure were analyzed using the distribution of iso-contours of temperature, iso-surfaces of the standard velocity vector and streamtraces for different Rayleigh numbers. The variation of the local and the surface-averaged Nusselt numbers at the inner hot cube wall are also presented to exhibit the overall heat transfer characteristics inside the enclosure. At the end, monomial correlations are presented for the quantification of the heat transfer that emanates from the heated cube and the spherical enclosure in harmony with the various Rayleigh number. It was found that the thermal and flow fields eventually reach steady state for Rayleigh numbers ranging from 10(4) to 10(7). Results indicate also that the heat transfer is increasing significantly by increasing Rayleigh numbers and optimal heat transfer rate is obtained for high Rayleigh number set to 10(7).