Journal
ENERGY AND BUILDINGS
Volume 35, Issue 3, Pages 305-311Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/S0378-7788(02)00088-9
Keywords
CFD; rectangular cavity; convective heat transfer; natural convection
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Heat transfer by the natural convection of air layers within vertical, rectangular cavities with aspect ratios (A) of 20, 40 and 80 was investigated in relation to applications in building facade elements, such as insulating glazing units, double-skin facades, doors, etc. using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Boundary conditions were assumed to be isothermal hot and cold wall, and zero heat flux at bottom and top cavity surfaces. Rayleigh numbers were between 1000 and 10(6), i.e. flow was either laminar or turbulent, and a conduction, transition or boundary layer regime was applied. The study focuses on overall convective heat flow through the air layer. The average Nusselt numbers calculated as a function of Rayleigh numbers are compared with five correlations from the literature which are based mainly on experimental data. Except for one correlation, no calculated Nusselt number deviates more than 20% from the correlations. Deviation is even <10% for A = 20. Therefore, this study improves the starting position for future applications of the code to more complex cases of facade elements, where less or even no experimental data are available in literature. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available