Multigrid Approach to Incompressible Viscous Cavity Flows

Abstract

Two-dimensional incompressible viscous driven-cavity flows are computed for Reynolds numbers on the range 100-20,000 using a loosely coupled, implicit, second-order centrally-different scheme. Mesh sequencing and three-level V-cycle multigrid error smoothing are incorporated into the symmetric Gauss-Seidel time-integration algorithm. Parametrics on the numerical parameters are performed, achieving reductions in solution times by more than 60 percent with the full multigrid approach. Details of the circulation patterns are investigated in cavities of 2-to-1, 1-to-1, and 1-to-2 depth to width ratios.