The Natural Convective Heat Transfer in a Partially Divided Enclosure: A Study on the Influence of the Source Position

The aim of this paper is to analyse the natural convective heat transfer generated by a source with a height of ζ located in two different positions inside a square enclosure of side H. In the first case, δ is 0.5 of H while in the second case it is 0.4. The comparison is based both on the evaluation of the local and average Nusselt numbers at different Rayleigh numbers and on the study of the velocity fields at the same Rayleigh numbers in the two different configurations. The experimental analysis was carried out through a holographic interferometry, to study the heat transfer, and through a 2D-PIV system, to analyse the dynamic behaviour of the phenomenon. Finally, for δ = 0.5 we compared the experimental results with those obtained through the volume finite software Fluent 6.3.26. In the analysis, it is possible to see that the position of the source influences both the average Nusselt numbers on the hot surfaces and the development of a small bubble on the upper surface