Experimental and numerical studies on periodic convection flow and heat transfer in a lid-driven arc-shape cavity

This paper presents experimental and numerical studies on periodic convection flow and heat transfer in a lid-driven arc-shape cavity with temperature differential. Three cases were considered: Gr = 2 × 10⁵, 5 × 10⁵ and 1.2 × 10⁶ at Re = 100 (Gr = Grashof number; Re = Reynolds number). The mathematical model was proposed in our previous study. The current study performs an experiment to validate this model, to corroborate the existence of the periodic flow, and to more deeply probe the internal flow and temperature characteristics. The experimental setup primarily comprised an arc-shape cavity, a moving lid, a thermo-system, a smoke generator and an image acquisition system. The periodic convection flow in the cavity was visualized using kerosene smoke. The numerical and experimental results consistently reveal that the periodic flow pattern was observed in the case with Gr = 5 × 10⁵, whereas the steady-state flow pattern took place in the other two cases (Gr = 2 × 10⁵ and Gr = 1.2 × 10⁶). The numerical simulation produced reasonable and satisfactory agreement with the experiment for the periodic flow pattern and period. The difference between the predicted and measured periods is less than 5%. The transport properties, such as average kinetic energy, overall Nusselt number, stream function, phase space trajectory, local kinetic energy, velocity history and temperature distribution, were further analyzed and discussed in this paper. The proposed numerical simulation not only confirms the experimental observation, but also enhances the understanding of periodic convection in an arc-shape cavity subjected to a moving lid and temperature differential.