Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer with Thermal Radiation in an Enclosure in Case of Buoyancy Driven Flow

The purpose of this paper is to investigate state of the art approaches and their accuracy to compute heat transfer including radiation inside a closed cavity whereas buoyancy is the only driving force. This research is the first step of an all-embracing study dealing with underhood airflow and thermal management of vehicles. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation results of buoyancy driven flow inside a simplified engine compartment are compared to experimentally gained values. The test rig imitates idle condition without any working fan. Thus, the airflow is only driven by natural convection. A conventional method used for these applications is to compute the convective heat transfer coefficient and air temperature using CFD and calculate the wall temperature separately by performing a thermal analysis. The final solution results from coupling two different software tools. In this paper thermal conditions inside the enclosure are computed by the use of CFD only. The impact of the turbulence model as well as the results of various radiation models are analyzed and compared to the experimental data.