Analysis of heat and fluid flow in partially divided fluid saturated porous cavities

Fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena in partially divided cavities filled with porous media have been numerically studied in this research. A non-Darcy generalized formulation is applied to describe the behavior of fluid flow in porous media. A splitting semi-implicit finite element method is adopted to solve the governing equations. The range of Ra involved in this study is between 10⁴ and 10⁶. Three different locations of dividers are investigated to probe the geometrical effect on heat and fluid flow. The results of Da = 10⁻² display a trend similar to the non-porous medium, but those of Da = 10⁻⁴ show dramatic decrease in flow strength, as well as heat transfer rate. A different location of divider may change the local and average Nusselt numbers. Received on 10 August 1999