NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL NATURAL CONVECTION IN A CLOSED RECTANGULAR CAVITY UNDER CONDITIONS OF RADIANT HEATING AND CONJUGATE HEAT EXCHANGE

The numerical simulation results of three-dimensional natural convection in a closed cavity were presented under conditions of the bottom horizontal solid-fluid interface radiant heating and conjugate heat exchange. Conservation equations of mass, momentum, and energy were formulated in terms of vorticity vector - vector potential - temperature dimensionless variables and solved by means of the finite difference method. It was found that the heat transfer process under study had a significant unsteady nature. According to the results of conjugate heat exchange integral analysis, it was shown that similar trends of mean Nusselt numbers versus dimensionless time were formed for both two and three dimensional problem formulations.