Natural convection around a pair of hot and cold horizontal microtubes in a relative large square
enclosure was numerically studied using multi-block Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Five typical arrangements
of the tube pair were made by placing the hot tube at various positions relative to the cold
tube, such as
side-by-side with, above or under. The hot and cold horizontal microtubes were put at the
middle of a horizontal square enclosure. No slip flow conditions were given for all of the tube and the
enclosure walls. Constant temperature conditions were given for the hot and cold tubes, respectively, and
the adiabatic condition for the square enclosure. The computational code was validated by performing a
benchmark case of a single hot isothermal horizontal microtube in the closed cold square cavity. A simple
experimental loop was set up in order to make a comparison with the obtained numerical results. Two
stainless microtubes with outer diameter of 1.00 mm were used for heat transfer test with a countercurrent
arrangement. The inlet water temperatures through the hot and cold microtubes were separately
controlled by two water baths. The numerical simulated range of Rayleigh number is Ra < 1500. A
correlation of Nusselt number with Rayleigh number was proposed based on the numerical results,
which is in general agreement with the obtained experimental data.