Natural convection in an annulus between two rotating vertical cylinders (Q5942650)

The authors study numerically effects of buoyancy, rotation and aspect ratio on the axisymmetric flow in a vertical cylindrical annulus bounded by cylinders which rotate with different angular velocities. It is assumed that inner and outer side walls are maintained at different constant temperatures, while the horizontal top and bottom walls are adiabatic. The basic Navier-Stokes, energy and continuity equations are first written in nondimensional form, and then are expressed in terms of vorticity and streamfunction. These equations with corresponding initial and boundary conditions are solved numerically using the implicit method of alternating directions (ADI) along with successive line over-relaxation method. Numerical results are obtained for a wide range of Grashof number Gr, non-dimensional angular velocities of inner and outer cylinders, and for different values of Prandtl number Pr. The effects of aspect ratio \(A\) on heat transfer and flow patterns are examined for \(A=1\) and 2. The authors show, among other things, that the rate of heat transfer at the hot cylinder is suppressed when its angular velocity is higher than that of the cool cylinder. When the outer cylinder rotates with lower angular velocity, the outward flow is confined to a thin region along the bottom surface, while the return flow occupies a major portion of the annulus for moderate Gr. It is also shown that the temperature distribution for low Pr is almost independent of the flow in the annulus, but it depends strongly on the flow for high values of Pr. For the rotation of the inner cylinder, the unicellular flow pattern for the case of \(A=1\) changes to a bi-cellular pattern as \(A\) increases to 2.