A STUDY OF UNSTEADY MIXED CONVECTION IN A LID DRIVEN FLOW INSIDE A RECTANGULAR CAVITY

A numerical study is conducted to identify the unsteady characteristics of momentum and heat transfer in lid-driven cavity flows. The cavity under study is filled with a compressible fluid and is of rectangular shape. The bottom of the cavity is insulated and stationary where as the top of the cavity (the lid) is pulled at constant speed. The vertical walls of the cavity are kept at constant but unequal temperatures. A two-dimensional, mathematical model is adopted to investigate the shear and buoyancy driven circulation patterns inside this rectangular cavity. This physics based mathematical model consists of conservation of mass, momentum (two-dimensional, unsteady Navier-Stokes equations for compressible flows) and energy equations for the enclosed fluid subjected to appropriate boundary and initial conditions. The compressibility of the working fluid is represented by an ideal gas relation and its thermodynamic and transport properties are assumed to be function of temperature. The governing equations are discretized using second order accurate central differencing for spatial derivatives and second order finite differencing (based on Taylor expansion) for the time derivatives. The resulting nonlinear equations are then linearized using Newton's linearization method. The set of algebraic equations that result from this process are then put into a matrix form and solved using a Coupled Modified Strongly Implicit Procedure (CMSIP) for the unknowns of the problem. Grid independence and time convergence studies were carried out to determine the accuracy of the square mesh adopted for the present study. Two benchmark cases (driven cavity and rectangular channel flows) were studied to verify the accuracy of the CMSIP. Numerical experiments were then carried out to simulate the unsteady development of the shear and buoyancy driven circulation patterns for different Richardson numbers in the range of 0.036<Ri<100 where the Re number is kept less than 2000 to assure laminar flow conditions inside the cavity. Simulations start with a stagnant fluid subjected to a sudden increase in one of the walls temperature. At the same time the upper lid of the cavity is accelerated, instantaneously, to a constant speed. The circulation patterns, temperature contours, vertical and horizontal velocity profiles were generated at different times of the simulation, and wall heat fluxes and Nusselt numbers were calculated for the steady state conditions. Only the results for a square cavity are presented in this paper. These results indicate that the heat transfer rates at the vertical walls of the cavity are enhanced with the decrease in Richardson number.