Transient Three-Dimensional Natural Convection in Confined Porous Media with Time-Periodic Boundary Conditions

Abstract

Transient three-dimensional natural convection in confined fluid-saturated porous media had been investigated numerically through this work. The geometry selected is a box with time-periodic temperature variation at the vertical sides and constant wall temperature at the top and bottom. In this investigation, the momentum equation of flow through fluid-saturated porous media had been transformed to a vector potential form and solved numerically using the Successive Over Relaxation method while the energy equation is solved using the three-dimensional Alternating Direction Implicit method. The values of the Rayleigh number under investigation are (150, 200, 250 and 300). The results are presented in a form of contour maps for the temperature and a velocity vector maps for the velocity. The results reveal that the temperature within the box is increased as the time or Rayleigh number increase.The Nusselt number varies inversely with the time and directly with the Rayleigh number. Two cell convective patterns are obtained in the y-z