Buoyancy effects on mixed convection heat and mass transfer in a duct with sudden expansions

The present paper deals with the study of heat and mass transfer by mixed convection in an inclined duct preceded with a double step expansion. The control volume based finite element method was used to solve the set of non-dimensional equations for the vorticity, stream function, energy and species conservation. Numerical simulations are carried out for different combinations of the Lewis number, thermal and mass diffusion Grashof numbers for different inclinations. Streamlines, temperature and concentration distributions are presented and discussed. The results show the effect of the secondary flow induced by buoyancy forces and the presence of the double step expansion on the heat and mass transfer mechanism. It is found that the recirculation vortices induced by the expansion can be present along the channel and the flow structure can be wavy. For the vertical orientation, asymmetric fields are observed for the different simulated cases.