Heat transfer enhancement in Rayleigh-Bénard convection using a single passive barrier

In this numerical study on Rayleigh-Bénard convection, we seek to improve the heat transfer by passive means. To this end we introduce a single tilted conductive barrier centered in an aspect ratio one cell, breaking the symmetry of the geometry and to channel the ascending hot and descending cold plumes. We study the global and local heat transfer and the flow organization for Rayleigh numbers 105≤Ra≤109 for a fixed Prandtl number of Pr = 4.3. We find that the global heat transfer can be enhanced up to 18%, and locally around 800%. The averaged Reynolds number is always decreased when a barrier is introduced, even for those cases where the global heat transfer is increased. We map the entire parameter space spanned by the orientation and the size of a single barrier for Ra=108.