Stabilized Finite Element Simulation of Double Diffusive Natural Convection

Abstract

Double-diffusion is a type of flow driven mainly by buoyancy forces, induced by the gradients of thermal energy and concentration of a chemical component. The understanding of this kind of phenomena is essential for many scientific and engineering applications. Computational fluid dynamics can be used to aid the understanding of the behavior of the temperature and concentration fields in this kind of phenomena. A stabilized finite element formulation is described and used to simulate doublediffusive process in a rectangular cavity, for several values of buoyancy rate, Lewis and Rayleigh number and it shows to be adequate for this kind of multiphysics problems.