Author(s)

Oumar Drame^1*, Cheikh Mbow¹, Florin Bode²

¹Fluid Mechanics Laboratory and Applications, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Dakar, Senegal.
²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

A two-dimensional numerical study of natural convection in a tunnel whose plane is sinusoidal with an opening on the horizontal ceiling is presented. In this work, we study the thermoconvective instabilities of air in a tunnel closed at both ends and heated by the floor. The study was carried out for different cases of geometry by varying the thickness of the sinusoid and the height of the tunnel. In order to create a transverse movement of the air, we heated the floor to the temperature T_f and kept the horizontal ceiling at the temperature T_g such that T_g < T_f. This work has a lot of scope of application ranging from geothermal flow to the civil engineering like ventilation in the case of tunnels and thermal comfort of buildings. The Navier Stokes equations that model this problem have been solved using the numerical method with simplifying assumptions such as the Boussinesq hypothesis. And finally an interpretation of the results of the simulations has been made taking into account the variation of the form factors such as the amplitude of the sinusoid for Rayleigh number 2 x 10⁴ ≤ R_a ≤ 7 x 10⁶ and Prendtl number P_r = 0.71.

Convection, CFD, Tunnel, Sunisoide, Thermoconvective

Drame, O. , Mbow, C. and Bode, F. (2019) Numerical Simulation of the Natural Convection in a Tunnel Whose Floor Has a Variable Sinusoid with a Roof Opening. Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics, 9, 326-333. doi: 10.4236/ojfd.2019.94021.