Natural convection in a rectangular porous enclosure with a vertical conductive partition

A numerical study has been made of the conjugate heat transfer problem concerning two-dimensional, steady, laminar natural convection in a rectangular porous enclosure with a centrally located conductive partition. The vertical and horizontal boundaries are considered to be isothermal and adiabatic, respectively. Numerical results are obtained fro Rayleigh numbers (Ra) in the range of 10 to 500, the aspect ratios (A) of the enclosure ranging from 0.5 to 5, the conductivity ratios of the partition to the fluid-porous matrix composite (C/sub R/) in the range of 1 to 100 and the ratio of the width of partition to that of enclosure (w-bar) in the range of 0 to 0.3. In the convection-dominated regime, with an increase in C/sub R/, the Nusselt number increases and then decreases after obtaining a maximum, and the maximum Nusselt number for the enclosure with conductive partition is lower than the corresponding value for the diathermal partition with zero thickness; however, in the conduction-dominated regime, as the C/sub R/ increases, the Nusselt number monotonically increases, and the maximum average Nusselt number maybe larger than that for the diathermal partition. As w-bar increases, the Nusselt number increases monotonically for small Ra, while for large Ra, the Nusselt number first decreases and then increases after obtaining a minimum