Author(s)

T.A. Kowalewski, G. de Vahl Davis and E. Leonard

Abstract

An experimental and numerical study has been made of natural convection in an open cavity. It was found that the presence of a free surface increases the hot- cold asymmetry of the bulk flow, At the free surface, a very slow recirculation was detected which appears to be decoupled from the main circulation in the cavity. Using standard free-surface boundary conditions, numerical modelling properly reproduced the bulk flow characteristics, but not the surface flow, A novel kinematic representation of the surface layer enabled the experimentally observed surface flow to be reproduced numerically. 1 Introduction Free surface flow is attracting increasing attention due to new material processing technologies such as laser welding, glass processing and the growth of high

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