through Porous Medium Enclosing a Rectangular Isothermal Body

Abstract:Steady free convection through a porous medium around a rectangular isothermalbody has been numerically investigated. The isothermal body is kept at constant lowtemperature and the porous medium has an impermeable rectangular boundaries. The cavitywall of porous material has a constant high temperature.The full governing equations (momentum an energy equation) have been solved forrange of values of the governing parameters by using the finite difference method andcovered a wide range of modified Rayleigh number (Ra) (0-500) with different sizes ofisothermal body. Results are presented in terms of the streamlines and isotherms to show thebehavior of the flow and temperature fields. This study shows that the Nusselt number (Nu)is a strong function of the modified Rayleigh number, the isothermal body size and boundaryconditions. For certain range of Ra, the rate of heat transfer decreases when the flow dividedinto primary and secondary cells