Jonas Holdeman |
May 15, 2019 10:20 |
Since no one else has responded to Munaf's question, I will make one more observation before this thread dies. In solving for natural convection flow in a cavity at Ra=1.5x10^5, I have experienced a situation like Munaf describes. In my problem, stream lines/fluid particles move toward the symmetry plane along a helical trajectory, then spiral outward, return to the end plane, spiral inward, and repeat. A spiral trajectory in the symmetry plane is shown in the lower left figure attached for Ra=1x10^4. At Ra=1.5x10^5, it seems that two centers develop, as shown in the lower right figure, which was found by stopping when the residual reached a first local minimum. The dual centers have been shown in several publications. At first glance this seems like flow found with the 2D thermal cavity, but there is a problem. The trajectories interleave as they spiral outward. But we know that neighboring particles or stream lines remain neighbors, except around stagnation points, so something strange is happening here. In fact, this configuration is unstable, and if iteration is continued, the residual increases to a local maximum, then decreases again. What is happening is that the symmetry is broken, and the residual increases while the (unsymmetric) flow is reorganizing. One might think of the flow around a circular cylinder, where flow is symmetric until the cylinder starts shedding vortices. Your situation may be different, but you might look for an explanation like this before you discard your results.
Sorry, file is too big. I will re-post this when I figure out how to make it smaller.
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