Numerical study of natural convection flow in a vertical slot

The stability of convective motion, generated by a lateral temperature difference across a vertical slot, is studied numerically over a range ofGr=5000 to 1.5 × 10⁵,Pr=0.01 to 10, andA=8,16 and 20. Various cellular flow structures and temperature patterns are illustrated. Several branches of solutions characterized by different numbers of the cells in the flow patterns as well as by both steady and unsteady multicellular patterns are found for low-Prandtl-number fluid in the vertical slot. Meanwhile, the behaviors of the temperature variation and heat transfer are also discussed. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (59776011) and by the Returnee from Abroad Funding of Academia Sinica.