Spectral element benchmark simulations of natural convection in two-dimensional cavities

This report presents the results of spectral element simulations of natural convection in two-dimensional cavities. In particular, a detailed comparison is performed with the reference data recently described by Christon et. al. [Int .J. Numer. Meth. Fluids, vol. 40, pp. 953-980, 2002]. The Navier-Stokes equations augmented by the Boussinesq approximation to represent buoyancy effects are solved by a numerical method based on spectral element discretisations and operator splitting. The computed results agree closely with the reference data for both the square and the rectangular cavity configurations.