Buoyancy-induced convection in water from a pair of horizontal heated cylinders enclosed in a square cooled cavity
Buoyancy-driven convention from a pair of horizontal heated cylinders, set side by side
inside a square cooled cavity filled with water, is studied numerically. The system of the
conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy expressed in dimensionless form is
solved through a control-volume formulation of the finite-difference method. The pressurevelocity
coupling is handled using the SIMPLE-C algorithm. Numerical simulations are executed
for different values of the Rayleigh number based on the cylinder diameter, as well as
the width of the cavity, the inter-cylinder spacing and the distance of the cylinders from the
bottom wall of the cavity normalized by the cylinder diameter. Two heat and fluid flow configurations
are generally found to establish inside the cavity, according as the cylinders are
located at close distance or at such a distance that the effects of the lateral walls of the cavity
become important, each of these configurations being distinguished by the existence of
an optimum inter-cylinder spacing which maximizes the overall heat transfer rate. Moreover,
when the inter-cylinder spacing is such that the cylinders are located sufficiently close to
the cavity sides, a periodic flow arises.