A Numerical and Experimental Study of Laminar Unsteady Lid-Driven Cavity Flows

Abstract

An experimental and numerical study was conducted to study unsteady lid-driven cavity flows. More specifically, the development of the circulation patterns inside a square cavity due to the movement of a rigid impermeable lid at constant velocity was observed experimentally and predicted numerically by CFD codes. Particle Image Velocimeter (PIV) technique was used to determine the flow field as it develops from stagnation to steady state inside a one inch (25.4 mm) square cavity driven by an impermeable lid. To avoid the three dimensional effects on the primary vortex, the depth of the cavity is taken to be 5 inches (127 mm). Working fluid is water and it is seeded with hallow glass spheres with 10 microns diameter. Experimental study was conducted for different lid velocities corresponding to Reynolds numbers for laminar to intermittent turbulence. The numerical study was carried out using commercial and in-house CFD codes for the steady state case, and using a commercial CFD code for the unsteady case. The predictions of unsteady flow field inside the two-dimensional square cavity were made using these codes which employ second order accurate (temporally and spatially) implicit numerical schemes. A time and mesh independence study was carried out to determine the optimum mesh size and time increment for the unsteady case study. Comparisons of the numerically predicted and experimentally measured velocity fields are made for steady and unsteady cases. The results indicate that the numerical predictions capture the characteristics of the circulation inside the cavity reasonably well however the magnitude of the velocities are underestimated.