Numerical simulation of the effects of plate separation and inclination on heat transfer in buoyancy driven open channels

 Effects of plate separation and inclination on free convection between asymmetrically heated vertical and inclined parallel plates have been simulated. The upper isothermally heated plate is facing downwards, the lower plate is passively heated by the upper one. The plate inclinations are chosen to be 0^∘, 30^∘, 45^∘ with respect to vertical position. Three-dimensional laminar numerical simulations are obtained by solving the full elliptic governing equations using a commercial finite volume based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Comparisons of computational results with experiments and data from the literature are made in terms of relevant dimensionless numbers. It was observed that plate spacing and inclination influence the overall heat transfer rate. Received on 3 November 1998