Author(s)

Paavo Sepri

Abstract

A special limiting case of enclosed natural convection is examined via combinations of analytical and computational methods. Under appropriate restrictions, the unsteady two-dimensional motion of a highly thermally conductive fluid may be described by the solution of a single equation involving the stream function, a characteristic Reynolds number, and the buoyant forcing term normalized to unity. The appearance of the biharmonic operator, along with homogeneous boundary conditions, makes this limiting case suitable for computation by an iterative Boundary Element Method. An alternative semi-analytical approach is also presented, in which a Green's function technique is employed to produce a particular solution for the non-linear interactions, and a superposition of flow modes is used to satisfy the altered boundary conditions. The use of biharmonic mode

Keywords