A heat function formulation for thermal convection in a square cavity (Q1093472)

A two-dimensional heat function formulation to study the net energy distribution pattern in the field of laminar natural convection within a square cavity differentially heated in the vertical direction is presented. Of particular interest is the response of the net energy trajectories to changes in the Rayleigh number as its value increases from the subcritical, through the treshold, to the postcritical values for the Bénard-type configuration. Numerical computations indicate that as the Rayleigh number increases in the order stated above, the heatline patterns exhibit apparent centrosymmetric characteristics about the vertical midsection of the enclosure for supercritical Rayleigh numbers. Numerical results are presented for a range of the wall-temperature ratio parameter, \(J^ *\), \(4.0\leq J^ *\leq 19.0\), in the normalized heat function equation and Rayleigh numbers, Ra, in the range \(0.5Ra_{cr}\leq Ra\leq 8.0Ra_{cr}\); \(Ra_{cr}\) being the critical Rayleigh number (1708) associated with the classical Rayleigh-Bénard problem.