A Novel Numerical Approach for Convective and Radiative Heat Transfer Analysis of Fluid Flow Problems Within Triangular Cavities Using Natural Element Method

Thermal analysis of fluid flow is always regarded as an important research issue within cavities in order to become familiar with the characteristics of fluid flow phenomenon in enclosures. This research paper investigates the fluid and heat transfer analysis of fluid flow inside a triangular cavity using natural element methodology (NEM). This Galerkin-based methodology has been introduced for a decade and almost demonstrated its efficiency in the numerical heat transfer analysis of problems in most engineering sciences. The fluid flow contains natural convection along with conduction and radiation heat transfer with medium's walls, which have absorbing, emitting, semitransparent, and non-scattering characteristics. The final results investigate the effects of radiative and natural convection heat transfer on the fluid flow pattern as expressed in Rayleigh number, stream function, strength of natural convection regime, etc., which are checked with other similar studies presented in the literature and shows how promising NEM can be as an efficient numerical approach to improve computational precision when dealing with fluid mechanic problems.