The Nusselt number Nu is the ratio of total heat flux to conductive heat flux. If the fluid flow is not solved, the heat equation can still use an equivalent conductivity to account for the convective heat flux in the conductive part. The conductivity is increased according to Nu to account for the contribution of the convective heat flux.

Correlations giving Nu from various material properties for two configurations of rectangular enclosures are described below. These correlations are based on the Rayleigh number

with αp the coefficient of thermal expansion defined as

where ρ is the fluid density, g the gravitational acceleration, Cp the heat capacity, μ the dynamic viscosity, k the thermal conductivity coefficient, ΔT the temperature difference through the cavity, and L the characteristic dimension of the cavity. The temperature difference through the cavity may be unknown a priori. In this case, ΔT can be defined using the Automatic option. The Automatic option defines a minimum and a maximum operator on the external boundaries of the domains where the correlation is used. As this option is designed for fluid domains where no heat source is defined, the difference between the maximum and the minimum of the temperature corresponds to the temperature difference through the cavity.