Numerical Study of Transient Mixed Convection in a Cylindrical Cavity

This article presents a numerical study of transient mixed convection of laminar flaws in a vertical cylindrical cavity. Initially, the fluid is considered at rest and motionless. The top, bottom, and peripheral surfaces of the tank are assumed to be well insulated. Fluid at a temperature above the initial temperature is injected into the cavity from different port locations. The resulting dynamic and thermal fields for different Richardson numbers are numerically studied in order to investigate the influence of geometrical parameters such as the inlet and outlet positions of the fluid. Study of the thermal stratification and thermal storage efficiency is also presented. To verify the validity of the solution procedure, three flow models taken from the literature are tested. The results are in good agreement with those of the references. For the case of they cylindrical cavity, the present model has been shown to predict the most efficient configuration with respect to thermal storage efficiency.