European Academy of Wind Energy Norwegian University of Science and Technology

The 2D lid-driven cavity – Validation of CFD code to model non-

Neutral Atmospheric Boundary Layer Conditions

T. W. Koblitz1, A. Bechmann1, N. N. Sørensen1

1)
Wind Energy Dep., Risø National Laboratory, DTU, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark

ABSTRACT
In order to improve existing models for wind resource assessment on complex terrain, the
effect of thermal stratification in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) should be included in
the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) methodology.
The existing in-house CFD code (Risø DTU) EllipSys3D provides the starting point for the
present work. Under neutral conditions the code has been validated against large scale field
experiments [2]. In the present study 2D simulations including the effect of thermal stability
are conducted and validated against previous benchmark simulations of a differentially
heated lid-driven square cavity (LDC).

KEYWORDS
CFD, Lid-driven square cavity, Mixed convection, RANS, Temperature gradient

1 INTRODUCTION
The diurnal cycle of heating and cooling of the ground surface strongly influences the wind
conditions in the earth atmosphere. Wind industry is increasingly relying on CFD and the
RANS approach but temperature stratification is mostly ignored in state-of-the-art CFD
models for wind resource assessment. For predicting these geophysical transport
phenomena it is essential to understand the effect of buoyancy on the shear flow in the ABL.
The differentially heated LDC is an excellent candidate to gain insight into the involved fluid
mechanical phenomena and to validate our incompressible flow solver. This standard CFD
test case is dynamically very complex and displays almost all fluid mechanical phenomena. It
has been studied extensively and a vast amount of benchmark literature is available. The
simple geometry shown in fig. 1 with its regular boundary conditions provides an appealing
setting to study the combined forced and natural convection (mixed convection). The forced
convection is induced by a shear force from the motion of the upper lid, whereas natural
convection is induced by the differentially heated horizontal walls. Except for the lid, all walls
are stationary (no-slip tangential and zero normal velocity boundary condition) and the
vertical walls are adiabatic. Three cases are considered: 1) horizontal walls at same
temperature (neutral case a) 2) top wall heated, bottom wall cooled (gravitationally stable

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European Academy of Wind Energy Norwegian University of Science and Technology

case b) 3) top wall cooled, bottom wall heated (gravitationally unstable case c). The steady,
laminar, 2D numerical simulations are performed for the following non-dimensional governing
parameters: Reynolds number: 316 5000, Grashof number: 10 , Prandtl
number 0.71 representative of air, Richardson number 0.1 10. The governing
incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (Boussinesq approximation employed) are solved
numerically using the finite-volume code Ellipsys2D [9-11].

Figure 1: Physical domain and boundary conditions for cases (a) stable and (b) unstable [5]

2 RESULTS
The code was tested and validated by means of grid sensitivity and convergence studies.
Therefore a mesh resolution of 128x128 was found to be sufficient for the present problem,
and a convergence criterion of 10 was used for all variables. Hence,
iterations were terminated when the maximum between two successive iterations was
smaller than 10 . The streamlines and isothermal lines of the conducted simulations are
visualized and qualitatively compared against the results from [1,5,7,8] in fig. 2. For reasons
of brevity only 1000 is presented. As the Ellipsys code employs the primitive variable
formulation (velocity and pressure) to describe the flow, the streamfunction Ψ was generated
from the axial velocity components by integrating over the physical domain in order to
compare our results with earlier studies that used the vorticity-streamfunction formulation.
δΨ δΨ
u,v (1)
δy δx
The top left plot shows the steady state streamlines of case (a). The driven-lid generates a
primary vortex that dominates the entire cavity, with small secondary eddies in the lower
corners. Table 1 presents the quantitative comparison of the primary vortex for the neutral
case. For case (b), shown in the second column of fig. 2, the stable temperature gradient
limits the main motion of the fluid to the upper region, resulting in an almost stagnant bottom
region with vertically-linear isotherms (middle plot). The unstable case (c) promotes natural
convection in the lower half of the cavity while the upper part is dominated by forced
convection. The interaction of both results in the formation of two counter-recirculating eddies

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European Academy of Wind Energy Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Figure 2: Visualization of streamlines (top), isothermal lines (middle) and mid-plane velocity
profiles (bottom) for cases (a) neutral, (b) stable and (c) unstable
Table 1: Comparison of primary vortex to benchmark simulations (neutral case):
streamfunction Ψ, vorticity Ω, location X, Y and error Δ %
Reference Grid Δ Δ Δ Δ
1000 Erturk and Gökçöl [6] 601 x 601 0.118938 1.70 2.067760 0.23 0.53000 0.48 0.56500 0.29
Ghia et al. [7] 128 x 128 0.117929 0.86 2.049680 0.65 0.53130 0.72 0.56250 0.74
Zhang [12] 128 x 128 0.118806 1.59 2.066777 0.18 0.53125 0.72 0.56250 0.74
Botella and Peyret [3] 128 x 128 0.118937 1.70 2.067750 0.23 0.53080 0.63 0.56520 0.26
Bruneau and Saad [4] 128 x 128 0.117860 0.80 2.050800 0.60 0.53125 0.72 0.56250 0.74
Bruneau and Saad [4] 1024 x 1024 0.118920 1.69 2.067400 0.21 0.53125 0.72 0.56543 0.22
Cheng and Liu [5] 128 x 128 0.116874 0.03 2.064753 0.08 0.53125 0.72 0.56250 0.74
Present 128 x 128 0.116912 2.063036 0.527450 0.566660
3200 Ghia et al. [7] 128 x 128 0.120377 2.03 1.988600 3.30 0.51650 0.60 0.5469 0.69
Zhang [12] 128 x 128 0.120157 1.86 1.948934 1.33 0.515625 0.77 0.539063 0.76
Cheng and Liu [5] 128 x 128 0.119845 1.60 1.947966 1.28 0.515625 0.77 0.539063 0.76
Present 128 x 128 0.117928 1.922957 0.519607 0.543135
5000 Erturk and Gökçöl [6] 601 x 601 0.122216 3.99 1.940547 2.81 0.51500 0.63 0.53500 0.05
Ghia et al. [7] 256 x 256 0.118966 1.37 1.860160 1.39 0.51170 0.01 0.53520 0.02
Zhang [12] 128 x 128 0.118121 0.66 1.906214 1.06 0.515625 0.75 0.539063 0.70
Bruneau and Saad [4] 256 x 256 0.120640 2.74 1.912500 1.38 0.51562 0.75 0.53516 0.02
Bruneau and Saad [4] 2048 x 2048 0.121970 3.80 1.932700 2.41 0.51465 0.56 0.53516 0.02
Cheng and Liu [5] 128 x 128 0.118224 0.75 1.909011 1.20 0.515625 0.75 0.539063 0.70
Present 128 x 128 0.117338 1.886077 0.511764 0.535292

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European Academy of Wind Energy Norwegian University of Science and Technology

having a large temperature gradient between them.

3 CONCLUSIONS

The modified finite-volume code Ellipsys2D that now accounts for thermal stratification has
been validated by solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations of the coupled
convective heat transfer problem in a differentially heated LDC for three different cases.
Qualitative comparisons of the flow patterns with earlier studies show good agreement, while
quantitative comparison shows better than 96 % agreement for the strength and position of
the primary vortex of case (a). This positive agreement shows that the solver is adequate to
solve the mixed convection problem like the one presented. As a next step we are currently
working on validating the code for 2D atmospheric flows over flat terrain including a modified
k-ε turbulence model that accounts for buoyancy effects. The long-term goal of the ongoing
work is to use the code to simulate atmospheric flow over complex terrain including the
diurnal effect of thermal stratification and to compare it against large scale field experiments.

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