Natural convection heat transfer in shallow horizontal rectangular enclosures uniformly heated from the side and filled with non-Newtonian power law fluids

A combined analytical and numerical study is conducted for two dimensional, steady state, buoyancy driven flows of non-Newtonian power law fluids confined in a shallow rectangular cavity submitted to uniform fluxes of heat along both its short vertical sides, while its long horizontal walls are considered adiabatic. The effect of the non-Newtonian behavior on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics is examined. An approximate theoretical solution is developed on the basis of the parallel flow assumption and validated numerically by solving the full governing equations.