Internal gravity wave resonance of thermal convection fields in a square cavity with heat‐flux vibration

In this paper, the thermal convection field and its resonance phenomena in a square cavity with sinusoidal heat‐flux vibration were numerically investigated. As the angular velocity ω is changed, the thermal convection field at Pr = 0.71,Ra = 10⁶ is found to be classified into 5 regions. In particular, the field has the local maximum relative amplitude of midplane Nusselt's number at ω_c = 350, which corresponds to the angular velocity of internal gravity wave ω_r estimated by a theoretical equation proposed by Thorpe. This shows that the local enhancement is induced by internal gravity wave resonance. Such correspondence is observed for Ra ≥ 10⁵,Ra ≥ 10⁶ for Pr = 0.71, 7.1, respectively. For these ranges of Ra we propose a correlation equation, a function of Pr and Gr only, to estimate the resonant angular velocity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 35(5): 309–322, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20122