NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FLUID FLOW IN A CUBIC CAVITY WITH A FOUR-FINNED DISSIPATOR PLACED ON THE BOTTOM SURFACE

Abstract

Heat transfer by laminar natural convection in confined spaces is of great interest in the engineering field. The flow that occurs in a cavity is an important physical phenomenon that must be investigated, as it can be
applied to projects of electronic components of electrical circuits with heat
dissipators. The objective of the numerical model consists of evaluating the
amount of heat transferred by the fins and also visualizing the velocity field and the isothermal lines in the fluid (air) and solid (aluminum) domains. The surface of the electronic component is kept at a high uniform temperature. The vertical surfaces are uniformly kept at low temperatures. The inferior horizontal surface around the electronic component and the superior horizontal surface are considered adiabatic. Four fins with rectangular crosssections are placed on the inferior surface of the electronic component. Solutions for low values of Rayleigh are obtained by keeping the Prandtl number equal to 0.70. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used. Hence, the Finite Volume Method (FVM) with Eulerian scheme is applied to solve the conservation equations for the unsteady state. It is assembled a 3D model with width wide enough to eliminate the wall effect in the flow and then enabling one to compare the results with 2D cases from literature. The present work shows that not only the increase of the Rayleigh number, but also the presence of the fins augments the heat transfer.