M. Farhangnia et al., NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF 2-DIMENSIONAL BUOYANCY-DRIVEN TURBULENCE IN ATALL RECTANGULAR CAVITY, International journal for numerical methods in fluids, 23(12), 1996, pp. 1311-1326
A computational study of natural convection of air in a tall rectangul
ar cavity with 4:1 aspect ratio is conducted. In an effort to investig
ate the applicability of the Boussinesq approximation to turbulent flo
w simulation, the cavity is differentially heated from the sides and i
s insulated at the ends at a Rayleigh number of 10(9). Starting from q
uiescent and isothermal flow conditions, the flow is driven to turbule
nce without any artificial perturbations. The computer programme devel
oped integrates the two-dimensional, time-dependent Navier-Stokes equa
tions with the Boussinesq approximation and the energy equation by a t
ime-accurate method on a stretched, staggered grid. The simulation pro
ceeds to a statistically steady solution in which large-scale structur
es are found in the mean. Both mean and fluctuating quantities provide
good agreement with experimental results.