TY - JFULL AU - Durga C. Dalal and Swapan K. Pandit PY - 2012/8/ TI - Transient Solution of an Incompressible Viscous Flow in a Channel with Sudden Expansion/Contraction T2 - International Journal of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering SP - 1157 EP - 1169 VL - 6 SN - 1307-6892 UR - https://publications.waset.org/pdf/6810 PU - World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology NX - Open Science Index 67, 2012 N2 - In this paper, a numerical study has been made to analyze the transient 2-D flows of a viscous incompressible fluid through channels with forward or backward constriction. Problems addressed include flow through sudden contraction and sudden expansion channel geometries with rounded and increasingly sharp reentrant corner. In both the cases, numerical results are presented for the separation and reattachment points, streamlines, vorticity and flow patterns. A fourth order accurate compact scheme has been employed to efficiently capture steady state solutions of the governing equations. It appears from our study that sharpness of the throat in the channel is one of the important parameters to control the strength and size of the separation zone without modifying the general flow patterns. The comparison between the two cases shows that the upstream geometry plays a significant role on vortex growth dynamics. ER -