Natural Convection in Triangular Enclosures Filled with Nanofluid Saturated Porous Media

This work focuses on the numerical modeling of a steady, laminar natural convection flow in a triangular enclosure partially heated from below and with a cold inclined wall filled with Cu-water nanofluid having variable thermal conductivity and viscosity. The problem is formulated in terms of the vortices stream function formulation and the resulting governing equations are solved numerically using an efficient finite difference method. Various results for the streamline and isotherm contours, as well as the local and average Nusselt numbers, are presented for a wide range of Rayleigh numbers and volume fractions of nanoparticles. Different behaviors (enhancement or deterioration) are predicted in the average Nusselt number as the volume fraction of nanoparticles changes. The placement and length of the heat source along the bottom wall is observed to have significant effects on the behavior of the average Nusselt number.