Natural Convection Heat Transfer Around a Sphere in a Rotating Fluid

Numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the steady- state natural convection occurring around a sphere immersed in a rotating viscous incompressible fluid. A higher order compact scheme (HOCS) is employed to conduct the numerical investigation, enabling accurate capture of complex fluid flow phenomena. The obtained results are based on a low Reynolds number(Re) and varying Taylor number(Ta) values ranging from low to moderate. The contours of streamlines, and vorticity lines are presented to describe the fluid motion resulting from natural convection. A noteworthy observation is that a Taylor column develops in the upstream region and a cyclonic vortex in the downstream zone with the increase in rotation of the fluid. As a result the local Nusselt number behaves in non-monotonically in the upstream region with increase of the Taylor number. It is observable that vorticity contours form in multiple regions with increase of Taylor number.