COUPLING OF WALL CONDUCTION WITH NATURAL-CONVECTION IN A RECTANGULAR ENCLOSURE

Conjugate heat transfer has been studied in an enclosure which consists of a conducting vertical wall of finite thickness with a uniform heat input, an insulated vertical wall and two horizontal walls at a heat sink temperature. The relative heat removal contribution by conduction in the solid wall to that by natural convection in the fluid enclosure, as well as the temperature and temperature gradient on the fluid-solid interface have been obtained for Rayleigh numbers, Ra, between 10(2) and 10(7), solid-fluid conductivity ratio, R(k), between 0.5 and 50, dimensionless solid wall thickness, W, between 0.05 and 0.25 and enclosure aspect ratio, A, between 0.1 and 10. The results indicate that for low Ra, high R(k) and W at small and large A, the heat transfer process is dominated by the heat conduction in the solid wall. For high Ra, low R(k) and W at moderate A, strong interaction between conduction in the solid wall and convection in the fluid influences the heat transfer.