Real-Time Observations of Density Anomaly Driven Convection and Front Instability During Solidification of Water

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Virkeshwar Kumar ◽  
Atul Srivastava ◽  
Shyamprasad Karagadde

Natural convection during solidification of liquids is known to impact the freezing characteristics and also lead to defect formation. In this study, we report the findings of real-time interferometric observation of bottom-cooled solidification of pure water in a cubical cavity. The results show first quantitative evidence of full-field thermal history during solidification, clearly depicting the anomalous expansion of water below 4 °C. Furthermore, based on the strength of natural convection, characterized by the Rayleigh number, we identify and report four distinct regimes of solidification, namely—conduction dominated, early convection, front instability, and sustained convection. A critical Rayleigh number that initiates instability in the solidifying front has been proposed, which is significantly different from conventional calculations of Rayleigh number relating to the initiation of flow. The study shows full-field quantitative evidence of a well-known phenomenon and provides a further understanding of flow driven nonhomogeneities in the solidifying interfaces.

Author(s):  
Vinicius Daroz ◽  
Silvio L. M. Junqueira ◽  
Admilson T. Franco ◽  
José L. Lage

The critical Rayleigh number at the onset of natural convection within a square cavity filled with a centralized porous block was investigated. The porous medium is modeled by using the heterogeneous model and the governing equations are solved for each phase separately. The thermal gradient is applied from the bottom to the top horizontal walls while the vertical walls are kept adiabatic. The amount of solid within the cavity was kept constant by fixing both external and internal porosity in 36% and 40%, respectively. The equations are solved using the Finite Volume Method and the interpolation scheme for the convective terms is the Hybrid Scheme. For the pressure-velocity coupling, the SIMPLEC method is used. The effects on the conductive-convective regime transition, reads critical Rayleigh Number, characterized by the average Nusselt number and the heatlines contour plot, was investigated by varying the Rayleigh number and the porous block permeability. The results show that the so called critical Rayleigh number is affected by the block permeability. As the permeability decreases, the flow tends to recirculate around the block being squeezed against the cavity walls and therefore, more susceptible to viscous effects. A correlation to the critical Rayleigh number is presented as a function of the agglomerate permeability showing that the higher the permeability the lower the amount of energy required to trigger the convection.


Author(s):  
Gillian Leplat ◽  
Emmanuel Laroche ◽  
Philippe Reulet ◽  
Pierre Millan

A two-dimensional numerical analysis of a laminar natural convection flow within an air-filled enclosure is proposed in this paper from an unstable configuration previously studied experimentally. The flow is driven by a heated square-section cylinder located at the center of a square-section enclosure. Instabilities are observed for an aspect ratio (height of the cylinder over the height of the cavity) of 0.4 and cause the flow to turn into a three-dimensional and unsteady regime characterized by a symmetry breaking and large scale high amplitude flappings around the cylinder. The multi-physic computational software CEDRE, developed at the ONERA, is used to study this unstable behavior and a time-dependent compressible flow solver is used to perform the two-dimensional simulations under the low Mach number approximation, corresponding to the mid-depth cross-section of the enclosure from the experimental configuration. The first results on the investigation of the first unstable modes confirm the onset of the instabilities at the Rayleigh number of the experiment with asymmetrical motions of the fluid around the cylinder. Further analyses highlight the critical Rayleigh number that defines the instability threshold of the first bifurcation which origin and nature could have been identified. Finally, joint fluid-solid simulations are performed to determine more precisely the role of boundary conditions in the onset of instabilities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 1950006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdellaziz Yahiaoui ◽  
Mahfoud Djezzar ◽  
Hassane Naji

This paper performs a numerical analysis of the natural convection within two-dimensional enclosures (square enclosure and enclosures with curved walls) full of a H2O-Cu nanofluid. While their vertical walls are isothermal with a cold temperature [Formula: see text], the horizontal top wall is adiabatic and the bottom wall is kept at a sinusoidal hot temperature. The working fluid is assumed to be Newtonian and incompressible. Three values of the Rayleigh number were considered, viz., 103, 104, 105, the Prandtl number is fixed at 6.2, and the volume fraction [Formula: see text] is taken equal to 0% (pure water), 10% and 20%. The numerical simulation is achieved using a 2D-in-house CFD code based on the governing equations formulated in bipolar coordinates and translated algebraically via the finite volume method. Numerical results are presented in terms of streamlines, isotherms and local and average Nusselt numbers. These show that the heat transfer rate increases with both the volume fraction and the Rayleigh number, and that the average number of Nusselt characterizing the heat transfer raises with the nanoparticles volume fraction.


Author(s):  
Florinda Capone ◽  
Jacopo A. Gianfrani

AbstractThe onset of natural convection in a fluid-saturated anisotropic porous layer, which rotates about the vertical axis, under the hypothesis of local thermal non-equilibrium, is analysed. Since the porosity of the medium is assumed to be high, the more suitable Darcy-Brinkman model is adopted. Linear instability analysis of the conduction solution is carried out. Nonlinear stability with respect to $$L^2$$ L 2 -norm is performed in order to prove the coincidence between the linear instability and the global nonlinear stability thresholds. The effect of both rotation and thermal and mechanical anisotropies on the critical Rayleigh number for the onset of instability is discussed.


1993 ◽  
Vol 254 ◽  
pp. 345-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Braester ◽  
Peter Vadasz

The results of an investigation on the effect of a weak heterogeneity of a porous medium on natural convection are presented. A medium heterogeneity is represented by spatial variations of the permeability and of the effective thermal conductivity. As a general rule the existence of horizontal thermal gradients in heterogeneous porous media provides a sufficient condition for the occurrence of natural convection. The implications of this condition are investigated for horizontal layers or rectangular domains subject to isothermal top and bottom boundary conditions. Results lead to a restriction on the classes of thermal conductivity functions which allow a motionless solution. Analytical solutions for rectangular weak heterogeneous porous domains heated from below, consistent with a basic motionless solution, are obtained by applying the weak nonlinear theory. The amplitude of the convection is obtained from an ordinary non-homogeneous differential equation, with a forcing term representative of the medium heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity. A smooth transition through the critical Rayleigh number is obtained, thus removing a bifurcation which usually appears in homogeneous domains with perfect boundaries, at the critical value of the Rayleigh number. Within a certain range of slightly supercritical Rayleigh numbers, a symmetric thermal conductivity function is shown to reinforce a symmetrical flow while antisymmetric functions favour an antisymmetric flow. Except for the higher-order solutions, the weak heterogeneity with respect to permeability plays a relatively passive role and does not affect the solutions at the leading order. In contrast, the weak heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity does have a significant effect on the resulting flow pattern.


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