Start-up flow in a three-dimensional lid-driven cavity by means of a massively parallel direction splitting algorithm

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to validate a new highly parallelizable direction splitting algorithm. The parallelization capabilities of this algorithm are illustrated by providing a highly accurate solution for the start-up flow in a three-dimensional impulsively started lid-driven cavity of aspect ratio 1×1×2 at Reynolds numbers 1000 and 5000. The computations are done in parallel (up to 1024 processors) on adapted grids of up to 2 billion nodes in three space dimensions. Velocity profiles are given at dimensionless times t=4, 8, and 12; at least four digits are expected to be correct at Re=1000. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.