Abstract
Natural convection flow in a cylindrical cavity is numerically investigated. The cavity is bounded by a vertical circular cylinder with ratio of height to radius 10, and heat source is located on the central region of the vertical wall with height equal to diameter.
In the case of a small Grashof number Gr and fixed Prandtl number Pr= 0.72, a steady-state flow is obtained with three convection cells corresponding to thermal boundary condition. The flow is changed from a steady-state to oscillatory states at the critical value of Gr which lies between about 1.2 × 104 and 1.22 × 104. In the range of large Gr, we can observe a periodic state, a periodic doubling state, and a periodic four-cell state with increasing Gr.
