Flow patterns in a steady lid-driven rectangular cavity with an embedded circular cylinder

Abstract

A detailed investigation of the flow in a steady lid-driven cavity of depth to width ratio 1:2 containing a circular cylinder is provided. Three different Reynolds numbers (based on the lid velocity and cavity depth) of 100, 500 and 1000 as well as four different cylinder radii to cavity depth ratios (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4) located at three different positions along the horizontal centerline of the cavity, are considered. It appears that these flows can be classified into seven different flow patterns. These flow patterns are given for different cylinder radii and positions as well as Reynolds numbers. There is a tendency that for a given cylinder radius, there are more transitions between different flow patterns for a small radius than for a large radius while for a given Reynolds number, the number of transitions is larger for high Reynolds numbers than for low Reynolds numbers. Overall, a larger number of flow patterns tend to emerge as the Reynolds number increases for small radii. The largest variety of flow patterns occur for the left-sided cylinder due to the interaction with the large anti-clockwise circulation flow formed at the bottom left corner.