Laminar Rayleigh–Benard convection in a closed square field with meshless radial basis function method

Abstract Research on natural convection is exciting in some experimental and numerical cases, especially in rectangular cavities with relatively low heat dissipation and thermal control systems with low cost, reliability, and ease of use. The present study will use the meshless radial basis function method to solve the velocity formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations by varying some nominal Rayleigh numbers of 104, 105, and 106. The numerical accuracy is compared with the previous research. The advantages of the meshless method are that it does not require a structured mesh and does not require inter-nodal connectivity. The results show that the temperature pattern is identical to the previous research. The calculations have been done for three different Rayleigh numbers of 104, 105, and 106 for 151 × 151 nodes. The variations of the Ra number will affect the isothermal, velocity contours, and Nusselt number.