Investigation of natural convection heat transfer in various structures of a partitioned triple porous enclosure under permanent magnetic field

Using porous media is an efficient technique aimed at enhancing heat transfer in engineering systems. Replacing conventional fluids by ferrofluids and applying external magnetic fields through magnets is another method for heat transfer control. In this regard, understanding the behavior of ferrofluids through porous media in the presence of magnets is important. The present study aims at providing a thorough analysis of the properties of heat transfer resulting from the combination of buoyancy driven convection and thermomagnetic convection in a porous enclosure. The equations governing the two types of convection in the fluid as well as the conduction in the solid matrix are presented in the dimensionless form and solved numerically. The control volume finite element method has been used to solve the governing equations. The influence of various parameters such as the magnetic Rayleigh number, the porosity, Darcy number, and the interfacial heat transfer coefficient on the flow and temperature contours and on the Nusselt number is then investigated. For low interface coefficient, the heat transfer in the fluid is enhanced when the overall porosity in the cavity is raised, while for high coefficients, the porosity of the bottom porous layer is the main parameter affecting the heat transfer.