Convection in viscoplastic fluids in rectangular cavities at lateral heating

The paper is devoted to the study of convective motions of viscoplastic fluids in closed two-dimensional rectangular domains with different aspect ratios under lateral heating. The problem was solved numerically using the ANSYS Fluent software. The Herschel-Bulkley model was chosen for describing the rheological behavior of the fluid. Under certain rheological parameters, this model was transformed into a Newtonian fluid model, whose behavior was also simulated as a limiting case. Based on the calculated results, the dependences of the maximum value of the stream function in the cavity on the Rayleigh number are plotted. It was found that at small Rayleigh numbers the intensity of motion is close to zero. At a certain threshold value of the Rayleigh number there is a sharp increase in the intensity of motion, and a further increase in the Rayleigh number causes an almost linear growth of the maximum value of the stream function. For each of the considered ratios of cavity sides, the "threshold" values of the Rayleigh number, at which a sharp increase in the intensity of motion of liquid is observed, were determined. The obtained values of Rayleigh numbers turned out to be close to the "threshold" values of the Rayleigh number for the Bingham fluid found in the works of other authors earlier. The fields of the stream function and the square root of the second invariant of the viscous stress tensor were obtained for different values of the Rayleigh number and different aspect ratios. The scenarios of rearrangement of quasisolid motion zones with increasing Rayleigh number were compared with the available results for the Bingham fluid.