THE SHAPE OF AN ENCLOSURE WITH UNIFORM-FLUX, ISOTHERMAL, NONHORIZONTAL WALLS

This paper presents a computational procedure and results of a numeric al quest for the shape of a special kind of differentially heated air- filled enclosure. The enclosure shape is such that the natural-convect ion flow in the enclosure gives rise to a uniform horizontal-heat-flux distribution at the isothermal hot and cold walls. By using an evolut ion algorithm, the isothermal walls are ''consumed'' according to the heat-flux distribution until a steady-state shape is reached. For both adiabatic and perfectly conducting horizontal walls, results of calcu lations are presented for Rayleigh numbers up to 8 X 10(4). The result ing flow and temperature distributions in the steady-state enclosures are presented and discussed.