Boundary element method for natural convection in non-Newtonian fluid saturated square porous cavity

The main purpose of this work is to present the use of the Boundary Element Method (BEM) in the analysis of the natural convection in the square porous cavity saturated by the non-Newtonian fluid. The results of hydrodynamic and heat transfer evaluations are reported for the configuration in which the enclosure is heated from a side wall while the horizontal walls are insulated. The flow in the porous medium is modelled using the modified Brinkman extended Darcy model taking into account the non-Darcy viscous effects. The governing equations are transformed by the velocity–vorticity variables formulation enabling the computation scheme to be partitioned into kinematic and kinetic parts. To analyse the effects of the available non-Newtonian viscosity and to evaluate the presented approach, the power law model for shear thinning fluids (n<1), for shear thickening fluids (n>1) and in the limit for the Newtonian fluids (n=1) is considered. Numerical model is tested also for the Carreau model adequate for many non-Newtonian fluids. Solutions for the flow and temperature fields and Nusselt numbers are obtained in terms of a modified Rayleigh number Ra^*, Darcy number Da, and the non-Newtonian model parameters. The agreement between the results obtained with finite difference method is very good indicating that BEM can be efficiently used for solving transport phenomena in saturated porous medium.