Heat performance resulting from combined effects of radiation and mixed convection in a rectangular cavity ventilated by injection or suction

In this work, we investigated numerically heat transfer by mixed convection coupled to thermal radiation in a vented rectangular enclosure uniformly heated from below with a constant heat flux. The fresh fluid is admitted into the cavity by injection or suction, by means of two openings located on the lower part of both right and left vertical sides. Another opening is placed on the middle of the top wall to ensure the ventilation. Air, a radiatively transparent medium, is considered to be the cooling fluid. The inner surfaces, in contact with the fluid, are assumed to be gray, diffuse emitters and reflectors of radiation with identical emissivities. The effects of some pertinent parameters such as the Reynolds number, 300 <= Re <= 5000, and the emissivity of the walls, 0 <= epsilon <= 0.85, on flow and temperature patterns as well as on the heat transfer rate within the enclosure are presented for the two ventilation modes (injection and suction). The results indicate that the flow and thermal structures are affected by the thermal radiation for the two modes of imposed flow. However, the suction mode is found to be more favorable to the heat transfer in comparison with the injection one.