LAUSR

Abstract The main aim of this study is to present an incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method for natural convection in a nanofluid-filled cavity including numerous solid structures. Here, ISPH was modified by stabilizing the evaluated pressure and avoiding the particles clustering. The pressure was stabilized by involving the divergence of the velocity and density invariance conditions in the source term of the pressure Poisson equation (PPE). For the particles clustering, we prevented the particles anisotropic distributions by using shifting technique in ISPH method. We compared the results from modified version of the current ISPH method with the other numerical results and it showed a well agreement. In this study, the solid structures were treated as rigid bodies using ISPH method. We investigated the presence and motion of the heated/cooled solid structures on the heat transfer and fluid flows. The flow pattern and the rate of heat transfer inside the cavity are affected by the current parameters including Rayleigh number, solid volume fraction, number and motion of the solid structures. It is found that the number of the solid structures results considerable effects on the heat transfer rate and fluid flow inside a cavity. And the motion of the solid structures depends on the value of the Rayleigh number and thermal conditions of the solid structures. The average Nusselt number has higher values at cooling solid structures case compare to the heating solid structures case. ISPH tool showed a good performance in studying the presence and motion of the solid structures inside a nanofluid-filled cavity.