Merit of non-uniform over uniform heating in a porous cavity

Energy transport in a bottom-heated porous cavity utilizing uniform and non-uniform heating is important as a fundamental study as well as from the perspective of various industrial and technological applications. The present work reports enhanced thermal energy transport using sinusoidally non-uniform heating over uniform hearing from bottom of a square cavity which is filled with fluid-saturated porous medium and cooled from side walls that translate. Comparative assessments of thermal performance under various parametric variations are performed on the basis of mean temperature of heating, which is maintained fixed for both types of heating. Flow physics of this problem is described by a set of nonlinear and coupled equations, which are solved numerically by an in-house CFD code. The results obtained from the present simulation reveal that, because of same mean temperature of bottom heating, the sinusoidally non-uniform heating significantly contributes towards higher heat transfer. The dynamics of thermal energy flow from the source to the sink is also addressed comprehensively using heatfunction and heatlines. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.