Finite-volume method for solving the entropy generation due to air natural convection in Gamma-shaped enclosure with circular corners
An enhanced cell-centered finite-volume procedure was presented for solving the natural convection of the laminar air flow in Gamma-shaped enclosure with circular corners. An explicit fourth-order Runge-Kutta integration algorithm was applied to find the steady state condition. Also an artificial compressibility technique was applied to couple the continuity to the momentum equations. The discretization of the viscous and thermal conduction terms are very simplified using the enhanced scheme similar to the flux averaging in the convective term. The Rayleigh numbers from 10(2) to 10(6) were considered. In the case of corner radius as r = 0, then the data available in open literature were used to validate the numerical model. The effect of the artificial compressibility parameter in convergence of solution was investigated. Additionally an analysis of the entropy generation in Gamma-shaped enclosure with circular corners was performed. It was seen that in the cases of the large radius corners, with a decrease of the irreversibility ratio, then the Bejan number increases. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
entropy natural convection artificial compressibility explicit finite-volume method