Numerical analysis of conjugate natural convection inside a cu-water nanofluid saturated porous enclosure

In the present paper, conjugate heat transfer (convection + conduction) of cu-water nanofluid inside square porous enclosures is investigated. The enclosure has two vertical isothermal walls with finite thickness and two adiabatic walls. In the porous medium, Darcy’s law is assumed to hold, the fluid and the porous matrix are in local thermal equilibrium. With these assumptions, the continuity, Darcy, and energy equations for steady and two-dimensional flow in an isotropic and homogeneous porous medium are solved by FORTRAN code using the finite-volume method. Computations are undertaken for Cu nanoparticle in a base fluid of water. The influences of the thickness of the vertical solid walls are analyzed for different Rayleigh number. Increasing the Rayleigh number or decreasing the thickness of walls enhances the average Nusselt number.