Modelling of natural convection flows with large temperature differences: a benchmark problem for low Mach number solvers. Part. 1 reference solutions

Heat transfer by natural convection and conduction in enclosures occurs in numerous practical situations including the cooling of nuclear reactors. For large temperature difference, the flow becomes compressible with a strong coupling between the continuity, the momentum and the energy equations through the equation of state, and its properties (viscosity, heat conductivity) also vary with the temperature, making the Boussinesq flow approximation inappropriate and inaccurate. There are very few reference solutions in the literature on non-Boussinesq natural convection flows. We propose here a test case problem which extends the well-known De Vahl Davis differentially heated square cavity problem to the case of large temperature differences for which the Boussinesq approximation is no longer valid. The paper is split in two parts: in this first part, we propose as yet unpublished reference solutions for cases characterized by a non-dimensional temperature difference of 0.6, Ra 106 (constant property and variable property cases) and Ra = 107 (variable property case). These reference solutions were produced after a first international workshop organized by Cea and LIMSI in January 2000, in which the above authors volunteered to produce accurate numerical solutions from which the present reference solutions could be established. (authors)