An Experimental Study on Natural Convection Heat Transfer in an Inclined Square Enclosure Containing Internal Energy Sources

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to study two-dimensional laminar natural convection within an inclined square enclosure containing fluid with internal energy sources bounded by four rigid planes of constant equal temperature. Inclination angles, from the horizontal, of 0, 15, 30, and 45 deg for Rayleigh numbers from 1.0 × 104 to 1.5 × 105 were studied. At inclined angles of 0 and 15 deg, there are two extreme values of temperature and temperature gradient within the fluid, while there is only one at 30 and 45 deg. Local and average Nusselt numbers are obtained on all four walls. As the inclination angle increases, the average Nusselt number increases on the right (upper) and bottom walls, decreases on the left (lower) wall and stays almost constant on the top wall.