Radiation-Induced Buoyancy-Driven Flow in Rectangular Enclosures: Experiment and Analysis

Experiments have been performed to study the rate of internal radiative heating on the natural convective motion in a vertical rectangular enclosure irradiated from the side. A Mach–Zehnder interferometer has been used to determine the temperature field, and a fluorescing dye injection technique was employed to illustrate the flow structure with water as the working fluid. A theoretical model is developed for predicting the absorption of thermal radiation and the subsequent buoyancy-driven flow. Predictions based on spectral calculations for the radiation flux divergence agree well with the experimental data.