This paper describes an experimental and analytical study of the phenomenon of heat transfer by natural convection in a rectangular enclosure fitted with an incomplete internal partition. The experiments were carried out in a water-filled enclosure with adiabatic horizontal walls and vertical walls maintained at different temperatures. Heat transfer measurements and flow visualization studies were conducted in the Rayleigh number range 109–1010, for aperture ratios h/H = 1, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 0, where h and H are the height of the internal opening (above the partition) and the height of the enclosure, respectively. It is demonstrated that the aperture ratio h/H has a strong effect on both the heat transfer rate and the flow pattern. The second part of the study consists of an asymptotic analysis of the same phenomenon, valid in the limit of vanishing Rayleigh numbers. The flow and temperature fields in this limit are reported graphically for H/L = 0.5, Pr = 0.71 and 0.3 < h/H < 0.7, where L and Pr are the enclosure length and the Prandtl number, respectively.
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