Numerical Analysis of Cu–H2O Nano-Fluid Natural Convection in a Trapezoidal Enclosure Filled Withporous Medium

The present simulation focused on natural convection in a semi-trapezoidal porous enclosure filled with water-based nanofluid. The mathematical model has been formulated in dimensionless stream function and temperature taking into account the Darcy–Boussinesq approximation. The Tiwari and Das’s nano fluid model with new more realistic empirical correlations for the physical properties of the nanofluids has been used for numerical analysis.The developed partial differential equations of the present computational domain are employed by using the vorticity stream function approach and the second ordered approximation finite difference scheme. The house-computational numerical algorithm has been validated against the previous work, and the computational results have been registered with good correlation. The impact of a wide range of governing parameters on fluid flow patterns and temperature gradient variations within the enclosure is exhibited in the form of flow patterns (i.e., streamlines), temperature contours (i.e., isotherms), and the local Nusselt number of the hot wall. The heat distribution from the hot wall is a raising function of buoyancy number-Ra where as an insignificance heat distribution (local Nusselt number) is observed for the impact of porosity parameter and nanofluid volume fraction. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature India Private Limited.