Lattice Boltzmann simulation of lid-driven flow in trapezoidal cavities

In this paper, an incompressible lattice Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (LBGK) model proposed by Guo et al. is used to simulate lid-driven flow in a two-dimensional isosceles trapezoidal cavity. Due to the complex boundary of the trapezoidal cavity, here the extrapolation scheme proposed by Guo et al. is used to treat curved boundary. In our numerical simulations, the effects of the Reynolds number (Re) and the top angle θ on the strength, center position and number of vortices in the isosceles trapezoidal cavities are studied. Re is varied from 100 to 15,000, and the top angle θ ranges from 50 to 90. Numerical results show that, as Re increases, the phenomena in the cavity become more and more complex, and the number of the vortexes increases. We also found that the vortex near the bottom wall breaks up into two smaller vortices as θ increases up to a critical value. Furthermore, as Re is increased, the flow in the cavity undergoes a complex transition (from steady to the periodic flow, and finally to the chaotic flow). At last, the scope of critical Re for flow transition from steady to periodic state, and from periodic to chaotic state is presented for different top angles θ.