NUMERICAL STUDY ON NATURAL CONVECTION OF A GROWING CRYSTAL IN SOLUTION LAYER CAVITY

Numerical study is performed on the thermal fluid-flow transport phenomena in a disk-shape cavity. Consideration is given to the movement and growth of the crystal in solution layer. Here the lysozyme is employed as the crystal. The mechanism is numerically investigated by solving the two-dimensional governing equations through discretization by means of a finite-difference technique and simultaneously the crystal movement is predicted by the Basset–Boussinesq–Oseen (BBO) equation. It is found that (i) the crystal circulates in the cavity with fluid current and shows the circulation pattern of a donut shape, like the flow in a typical Benard cell, (ii) when the particle makes the second circulation with a larger loop, it falls on to the bottom near the vertical side-wall, and (iii) the size of the falling particle becomes larger as the Rayleigh number, i.e. the temperature difference between the heat sink and the vertical side-wall is increased.