Investigation of a natural convection in a small slot using a finite difference method

Experimental results by Koster who studied natural convection processes in slender Hele-Shaw cells are simulated with an existing two-dimensional natural convection code. This investigation yields the following results: The basic model of the calculations, which assumes a constant temperature across the gap (smallest extent of the Hele-Shaw cell) and thus without heat exchange with the Plexiglas windows, leads to an underestimation of the experimentally obtained critical Rayleigh numbers (onset of convection, onset of oscillatory convection) by one order of magnitude and an overestimation of the nondimensional period compared to experimental findings. Another version of the code, which permits heat exchange with the windows reveals an overestimation of the critical Rayleigh numbers and smaller dimensionless periods than the experiments. By these two different approaches a twoside bounding the Koster's experiments are achieved. As the modified version overestimates the real heat transfer from and to the windows it may be concluded that using a suitably adapted heat transfer coefficient for the thermal coupling of the fluid and the windows numerical simulation would also reproduce quantitatively the results of Koster. The reason for the break down of the steady flow solution and the onset of transient flow was studied numerically by examining a model proposed by Howard. At this time no really satisfying answer to this question is available. (orig./GL)