NATURAL CONVECTION AND RADIATION IN A SQUARE ENCLOSURE

Abstract
Natural convection of a radiating fluid in a square enclosure is studied numerically. The coupled momentum, energy, and radiative transfer equations are solved by an iterative procedure. The solutions to the equation of radiative transfer are obtained by the discrete ordinates method using S4 and S8 quadratures. The method is based on control volume formulation and is fully compatible with the SIMPLER algorithm used to solve the momentum and energy equations. The effects of optical thickness and scattering on the flow and temperature fields and heat transfer rates are analyzed. The changes in the buoyant flow patterns and temperature distributions due to the presence of radiation in inclined or heat generating enclosures are also studied. Comparative results obtained by the P-I differential approximation are presented.