Thermal convection in an enclosure with sinusoidal bottom wall temperature: Effect of vibrating side wall

Abstract

The effects of a vibrating side wall on flow structure and heat transport in an air - filled two dimensional rectangular shallow enclosure with sinusoidal spatial bottom wall temperature distribution is studied numerically. The vibrating side wall induces an oscillating flow having nonzero mean component in the enclosure. The side walls of the enclosure are adiabatic. The top wall is isothermal and kept at initial temperature. The fully compressible form of the Navier Stokes equations are considered to predict the oscillatory and time averaged mean flow fields. A control-volume method based, explicit computational scheme is used to simulate the convective transport in the enclosure. The simulation results of a test case for an unheated enclosure are compared with the existing literature for code validation. The sinusoidal temperature gradient of the bottom wall strongly affects the flow structures and velocities. The mean fluid motion significantly alters the overall heat transfer from the bottom wall.