Natural convection in a flexible sided triangular cavity with internal heat generation under the effect of inclined magnetic field

•MHD free convection of triangular cavity with flexible wall is studied.•Averaged Nu decreases with increasing RaI and Ha numbers.•Elastic modulus of flexible wall affects heat transfer and fluid flow.•Magnetic inclination angle generally enhances the averaged Nu.

In this numerical study, magnetohydrodynamics natural convection in a flexible sided triangular cavity with internal heat generation is investigated. The inclined wall of the cavity is cooled and flexible while the left vertical wall is partially heated. Galerkin weighted residual finite element method is used to solve the governing equations. The effects of pertinent parameters such as external Rayleigh number (between 104 and 106), internal Rayleigh number (between 104 and 107), elastic modulus of flexible wall (between 500 and 105), Hartmann number (between 0 and 40) and inclination angle of the magnetic field (between 0° and 90°) on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics were numerically investigated. It was observed local and averaged Nusselt number enhance with external Rayleigh number but in the vicinity of the upper location of the heater local heat transfer deteriorates due to the inclined wall deformation with increasing external Rayleigh number. Heat transfer reduces with internal Rayleigh number and Hartmann number. Averaged heat transfer decreases 13.25% when internal Rayleigh number is increased from 104 to 107 and decreases 40.56% when Hartmann number is increased from 0 to 10. The reduction in the convection with magnetic field is effective for higher values of external Rayleigh numbers and averaged heat transfer increases with magnetic field inclination angle.