Use of the mixing length concept to correctly reproduce velocity profiles of turbulent flows
Since the viscous analogy of turbulence was introduced by Reynolds, many formulations for turbulent viscosity have been proposed. One of them, based on the mixing length concept, is investigated here in a broader point of view. The mixing length concept was used to correctly model turbulent velocity profiles for irregular two-dimensional and three-dimensional domains. Two cases of study were investigated for this purpose: a simple two-dimensional aerodynamic problem and a more complicated three-dimensional hydraulic problem. Results showed that the use of a constant viscosity fails to correctly reproduce experimental observations. On the other hand, the use of the mixing length concept leads to a good agreement between the measured and predicted values.Key words: fluid flow, finite element method, mixing length flow theory, turbulent flow, velocity profiles.