Buoyancy convection in a square cavity with mutually orthogonal heat generating baffles

A two-dimensional numerical solution for buoyancy induced convection in a square cavity with discretely heat generating baffles is presented in the context of cooling of electronic equipments. The walls of the cavity are subjected to either isothermal temperature or outward isoflux. The Grashof number and Prandtl number are fixed at 106 and 0.71, respectively. The effects of different locations of the baffles are reported in terms of streamlines and temperature contours. The results obtained clearly show that the fluid flow and temperature fields strongly depend on location of the baffles. The movement of either the horizontal or vertical plate produces no significant changes in the overall heat transfer rate except when one of them is wall mounted in the presence of isothermal cavity walls. In the case of isoflux cavity walls the overall heat transfer rate gets suppressed for the upward movement of the horizontal baffle and enhanced for the horizontal movement of the vertical baffle in the core region of the cavity. When one of the baffles moves closer to a cavity wall thermal boundary layer is formed and hence conduction becomes dominant in between them in the case of isothermal cavity walls. But in general the presence of isoflux cavity walls arrests crowding of isotherms. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.