Tracing the boundary layer development over a flat surface in natural convection
 

I am working on natural convection over a flat plate. I created the geometry in gambit with face mesh with around 10,000,00 nodes. I am analysing 2d steady state but even after 10000 iterations, I am not able to get plumes moving up from bottom surface.Working fluid is water.Flux supplied to bottom plate( copper) is 500. Side walls are glass with temperature of 300K.Please do help me with your suggestions. Thanks!!

Hi Arvin,
check if you have turned ON gravity and if you have set up the density law (as a function of Temperature) in Materials Menu.

Kind Regards

Hi Bionico. I have set up density as Boussinseq approximation. Gravity is turned ON. I didn't attach a boundary layer mesh. Does it affect this problem?. The geometry is rectangle.

Yes, it may affect your simulation: you should have y+=1 in the first layer of boundary layer.

Kind regards

I have started the simulation using polynomial for density of water. The expression is 1000-0.02T. Currently I am using pressure based solver. Is it ok to continue the simulation?

I don't know if polynomial law is suitable for water (I assume that you already studied some books); the solver is ok. Go ahead! :)

Regards