Natural convection in vertical channels with an auxiliary plate

Abstract

Research on natural convection in open channels is very extensive due to its role in many engineering applications such as thermal control of electronic systems. In this paper, a parametric analysis is carried out in order to add knowledge of heat transfer in air natural convection for a symmetrically heated vertical parallel plate channel with a central auxiliary heated or adiabatic plate. The two‐dimensional steady‐state problem is solved by means of the stream function–vorticity approach and the numerical solution is carried out by means of the control volume method. Results are obtained for both a heated and unheated auxiliary plate, for a Rayleigh number in the range 103–106, for a ratio of the auxiliary plate height to the channel plate height equal to 0, 0.5 and 1 and for a ratio of the channel length to the channel gap in the range 5–15. Correlations for maximum wall temperatures and average channel Nusselt numbers are proposed.