Conjugate natural convection in a square enclosure with inclined thin fin of arbitrary length

This work is focused on the numerical study of steady, laminar, conjugate natural convection in a square enclosure with an inclined thin fin of arbitrary length. The inclined fin is attached to the left vertical thin side of the enclosure while the other three sides are considered to have finite and equal thicknesses of arbitrary thermal conductivities. The left wall of the enclosure to which the fin is attached is assumed heated while the external sides of the other three surfaces of the enclosure are cooled. The inclined thin fin is perfectly conductive and is positioned in the middle heated surface of the enclosure. Three different fin lengths equal to 20, 35 and 50 percent of the heated surface are considered. The problem is formulated in terms of the vorticity-stream function procedure. A numerical solution based on the finite-volume method is obtained. Representative results illustrating the effects of the thin fin inclination angle and length and the thermal conductivity of the thick surfaces on the streamlines and temperature contours within the enclosure are reported. In addition, results for the local and average Nusselt numbers are presented and discussed for various parametric conditions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.