Heatline visualization of conjugate heat transfer in square porous enclosure

Conjugate natural convection-conduction heat transfer in a square porous enclosure filled with a fluid-saturated porous medium is studied numerically in the present article. Complete numerical simulations of the two enclosures, one with bounded conductive walls and the other with a partitioned conductive wall, are carried out. The analysis is performed in the following ranges of the associated dimensionless groups: the wall thickness, 0:0 ≤ D ≤ 1:0, the thermal conductivity ratio, 0:1 ≤ Kr ≤ 10:0, the porosity, 0:4 ≤ ε ≤ 0:99, and the Darcy number, 10-3 ≤ Da ≤ 5 × 10-2. Optimal combinations of the wall thickness, thermal conductivity ratio, porosity, and Darcy number to control the fluid flow and thermal performance of both enclosures were obtained.