Numerical Prediction of Natural Convection Heat Transfer through Porous Media by the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Abstract

In this paper, we report an efficient numerical method to predict thermal fluid flow behavior in a square cavity filled with porous medium. The conventional Navier-Stokes equations are solved indirectly, i.e by the lattice Boltzmann formulation with second order accuracy in space and time. Numerical experiments were performed with different values of medium porosity and Rayleigh number to investigate the effect of these dimensionless parameters on the thermal fluid flow behavior in the cavity. In the current study, we found that the dynamics and the structure of primary vortex are significantly affected by the Rayleigh number and the medium porosity.