NUMERICAL STUDY OF LAMINAR FREE CONVECTION FLOWS IN A VERTICAL STACK OF PARALLELOGRAMMIC PARTIAL ENCLOSURES

Laminar natural convection within a tall, differentially heated enclosure of aspect ratio of 5, and subdivided in five compartments by partial partitions (shutters) is studied numerically. The partitions, although thin, are of finite thickness, and they participate in the overall convective heat transfer process (conjugate problem). The results are presented in terms of a normalized Nusselt number as a function of the Rayleigh number (10³:10⁷), the partitions' angle (60° : −60°), and the thermal conductivity ratio (1:1000), respectively.