Spectral element simulations of buoyancy-driven flow

Abstract

This paper is divided in two parts. In the first part, a brief review of a spectral element method for the numerical solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is given. The method is then extended to compute buoyant flows described by the Boussinesq approximation. Free convection in closed two-dimensional cavities are computed and the results are in very good agreement with the available reference solutions.

Second National Conference on Computational Mechanics, Trondheim, May 2003. 12 pages, 11 Figures