NUMERICAL STUDY FOR PRANDTL NUMBER DEPENDENCY ON NATURAL CONVECTION IN AN ENCLOSURE WITH SQUARE ADIABATIC BODY

The natural convection in a horizontal enclosure heated from the bottom wall, cooled at the top wall, and having a square adiabatic body at its centered area was studied. Three different Prandtl numbers (0.01, 0.7 and 7) were considered for an effect of the Prandtl number on natural convection. A two-dimensional solution for unsteady natural convection was obtained, using Chebyshev spectral methodology for different Rayleigh numbers varying over the range of $10^4$ to $10^6$ . It had been experimentally and numerically reported [1,2] that the heat transfer mode becomes oscillatory when Pr is out of a specific Pr band beyond the critical Ra. In this study, we reproduced this phenomenon numerically. The variation of time- and surface-averaged Nusselt numbers on the hot and cold walls for different Rayleigh numbers and Prandtl numbers was presented to show the overall heat transfer characteristics in the system. And also, the isotherms and streamline distributions were presented in detail to compare the physics related to their thermal behavior.