Effect of gas compressibility on thermal-convection in a closed space

The paper is concerned with the effect of compressibility on the flow and free-convection heat transfer in a spherical layer of compressible gas. The mechanism responsible for generating the convective flow in the field of external forces is uniform heating of the inner and outer spherical surfaces. The stated problem has spherical symmetry, and the gas filling the spherical layer is ideal. The effect is assessed by numerical solution of equations in terms of three physical variables with allowance for compressibility and dissipation. The flow and temperature fields over the compressibility ratio range 0.01-0.5 are examined. It is shown that the heat transfer rate increases with the compressibility ratio.