Effects of outflow boundary condition on convective heat transfer with strong recirculating flow

Three practices of treating outflow boundary condition were adopted in computations for convective heat transfer of a two-dimensional jet impinging in a rectangular cavity. The three practices were local mass conservation method, local one-way method and fully developed assumption. The numerical solutions of the three methods were compared with test data obtained via, naphthalene sublimation technique. It was found that the fully developed assumption was inappropriate, and the local one-way method could provide reasonably good results for the cavity bottom, while for the lateral wall the results with this method qualitatively differed from the test data. The solution with the local mass conservation method was the best. It thus suggested that for a problem expected with a strong recirculating flow at the exit of the computation domain, the local mass conservation method be adopted to treat the outflow boundary condition.