Buoyancy-induced periodic flow and heat transfer in lid-driven cavities with different cross-sectional shapes

This report is concerned with transient behavior of a buoyancy-induced periodic flow in different lid-driven cavities with different cross-sectional shapes. Periodic flow patterns and heat transfer characteristics for various geometries are predicted. Governing equations are discretized based on the finite volume method with a curvilinear grid system generated numerically by the body-fitted coordinate transformation. Attentions are focused at nine cases of cross-sectional shape. For all the cases considered, Reynolds number and Grashof number are fixed at 100 and 5×105, respectively. Results show that among the nine cases, cases 1/5C, 1/4C, 1/4T, and 1/5R tend to produce the periodic flow pattern and, case 1/5T exhibits the highest heat transfer performance.