Review on Natural Convective Heat Transfer Inside cavities

Heat transfer by natural convection arising from a hot source to its surrounding cavity has important attention in the last two decades because of extensive practical applications. Applications include electronics cooling, solar collectors, thermal storage systems, working fluid systems, reactors and gas insulated electrical transmission systems, renewable energy systems, discharging process, etc. The aim of adding the enclosure is to decrease the heat losses from the hot source to its surrounding or to protect the system from harsh outdoor environment. Different researches were carried out experimentally and theoretically to investigate the effect of different parameters on the natural convection heat transfer inside cavities such as, Rayleigh number, Prandtl number, magnetic effect (Hartmann number), inclination angle, position and location of heat source, changing the length of heat source, etc. Moreover, different enhancement techniques of heat transfer were used such as adding the nanoparticles to the based fluid, using of porous media under different thermal boundary conditions. The present paper includes a review on the natural convection heat transfer inside cavities with different conditions mentioned above.