3-DIMENSIONAL AND HEAT-LOSS EFFECTS ON TURBULENT-FLOW IN A NOMINALLY 2-DIMENSIONAL CAVITY

This paper reports numerical explorations of turbulent natural convect ion in a cavity of 5:1 aspect ratio, the heated and cooled surfaces (l ong sides) being vertical. An extended form of k - epsilon eddy viscos ity model is adopted, which had earlier been employed to study the sam e flow assuming two-dimensional (2-D) motion with perfectly insulating end walls. The present computations consider the three-dimensional (3 -D) behavior and allow realistic heat losses through the nominally adi abatic surfaces. These generalizations, particularly the latter, accou nt for most of the differences that had hitherto existed between the e xperiment and computations.