NUMERICAL STUDY OF CONJUGATE NATURAL CONVECTION OVER VERTICAL FLAT PLATE WITH PROTRUDING HEAT SOURCES

Resumo

The paper presents a numerical simulation of conjugate natural-convection heat transfer from
protruding heat sources in a flat plat mounted vertically. This problem arises as a typical concern of
designing electronic systems that involves buoyance-driven flows above heat sources modules. The

main objective is to apply a methodology to validate numerical results for vertical position using a bi-
dimensional, steady state, finite-volume method and to obtain dynamic and thermal fields. The plate

contains seven elements uniformly distributed at the upper surface and an insulation layer at the bottom
guaranteeing convection mechanism in only one side of the sources. Fluid physical properties are
assumed uniform except for the buoyancy terms, which are obtained from the Boussinesq approximation
of Navier-Stokes equations. Heat conduction in the plate is accounted in addition to convection and
radiation in order to evaluate heat transfer mechanisms and non-dimensional parameters. Three different
power inputs were simulated and evaluated using temperature distributions and Nu distribution around
the sources