Laminar Mixed Convection in a Lid-Driven Square Cavity with Two Isothermally Heated Square Internal Blockages

Laminar mixed convection in a lid-driven square cavity with two isothermally heated square internal blockages is numerically investigated. The top lid of the cavity is moving rightwards with a constant speed. The two blockages are maintained at an isothermal hot temperature, while the walls of the cavity are maintained at a cold temperature. The flow and heat transfer behavior is studied for various placements of the blockages through analyzing the local Nusselt number distribution around the edges of the blockages and the average Nusselt number at the blockage surfaces at various Richardson and Reynolds numbers. Investigations are performed in a range of Reynolds number (100-500), Richardson number (0.1-10), and at a fixed Prandtl number (0.71). Computations are done using the ANSYS FLUENT commercial code based on a finite volume method. It is observed that, the average Nusselt number on the blockage surfaces increases with increasing Reynolds number at any Richardson number. The average Nusselt number changes significantly due to the change of blockage placement locations. The separation distance between the two blockages has large effect on the total average Nusselt number.