The lid-driven Cavity
The flow in a rectangular cavity driven by a moving sidewall is of basic importance for the study of vortex flows in closed geomtries. Moreover, it is related to many engineering applications such as the flow over structures in airfoils, the cooling flow over electronic devices, or in the flow in short dwell coaters. In the field of computational fluid dynamics the lid-driven cavity problem is probably the most widespread benchmark test.
Figure 1: Geometry of the generalized lid-driven cavity. The flow inside the cavity (blue) is investigated.
In the classical lid-driven cavity the flow is driven by the tangential motion of a single lid. Our investigations are concerned with a generalization of problem in which two facing side walls of the cavity move parallel or antiparallel to each other with constant but different speeds. The setup is illustrated in fig. 1. In the experiments, the moving side walls are realized by two rotating cylinders whose radii are large compared to the gap between them. This way effects of the wall curvature are minimized. The numerical computations were carried out for a strictly recangular geometry with periodic or rigid boundary condition in the spanwise direction. More detailled information is available under