A combined numerical and experimental study of air convection in a differentially heated rotating cubic cavity

Abstract

A combined numerical and experimental study was carried out to investigate the steady convective flow structure and the how stability in an inclined cubic air cavity subject to differential heating across a pair of side walls and subject to rotation about an axis which is normal to the insulated bottom wall and through the geometric center of the cavity. In the numerical simulation the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes and energy equations were directly solved by the projection method for the vertical cavity (phi = 0 degrees). While in the experimental study the air temperature in the cavity at selected locations was detected for both steady and unsteady flows. Results were obtained for Delta T = 10 degrees C and 4.6 degrees C, Omega from 0 rpm to 453 rpm and phi from 0 degrees to 75 degrees. The numerical results clearly revealed the complex multicellular flow structure in a vertical cavity at low rotation rates in which the mutual interactions of the thermal buoyancy, Coriolis force and rotational buoyancy are important. The experimental data suggested that the air flow can be stabilized by the cavity rotation when the rotation rate is low. But al high rotating speed the cavity rotation produced destabilizing effects. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.