Author(s)

J.P. Barbosa Mota & E. Saatdjian

Abstract

Natural convection between eccentric, horizontal porous cylinders J.P. Barbosa Mota & E. Saatdjian* ENSIC-LSGC, 1 Rue Grandville, B.P. 451, 54001 Nancy Cedex, France ABSTRACT Natural convection in a saturated porous medium bounded by two hori- zontal eccentric cylinders is studied numerically by solving the governing Darcy-Boussinesq equations using finite differences on a very fine grid. For moderately high values of the Rayleigh number Ra, there exists an opti- mum value of the eccentricity ratio e for which the total heat transfer is minimized. The very accurate code presented here is not limited to low or moderate Rayleigh numbers, and could be useful to study some interest- ing flow characteristics, such as bifurcation phenomena and multi-cellular regimes, for the higher Rayleigh numbers. INTRODUCTION Natural convection in porous cylindrical annuli is the principal mode of heat transfer in numerous applications such as the insulation of either an aircraft

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