The leading edge effect in a suddenly differentially heated cavity

Abstract

We perform a two dimensional numerical simulation of transient natural convection in a suddenly differentially heated cavity in order to observe the initial transient flows, particularly the leading edge effect. The numerical results show that the pressure plays a key role in the origination and propagation of the leading edge effect and the deviation of the numerical solution from the theoretical solution is due to the neglect of the convection terms in the theoretical solution of the energy equation. Accordingly, the one dimensional conduction solution does not estimate the transport coefficients.