Unsteady natural convection in a cavity with internal heating and cooling

Abstract

The problem of transient natural convection in a cavity of aspect ratio A < 1 driven by internal buoyancy sources and sinks distributed linearly in the horizontal and uniformly in the vertical is considered. Scaling analysis is used to show that a number of possible transient flow regions are possible, collapsing ultimately onto one of conductive, transitional, or convective steady-state flow regimes. A number of numerical solutions are obtained, and their relationships to the scaling analysis are discussed.