scholarly journals Effect of Local Grid Refinement on Performance of Scale-Resolving Models for Simulation of Complex External Flows

Aerospace ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amne ElCheikh ◽  
Michel ElKhoury

Numerical simulations are crucial for fast and accurate estimations of the flow characteristics in many engineering applications such as atmospheric boundary layers around buildings, external aerodynamics around vehicles, and pollutant dispersion. In the simulation of flow over urban-like obstacles, it is crucial to accurately resolve the flow characteristics with reasonable computational cost. Therefore, Large Eddy Simulations on non-uniform grids are usually employed. However, an undesirable accumulation of energy at grid-refinement interfaces was observed in previous studies using non-uniform grids. This phenomenon induced oscillations in the spanwise velocity component, mainly on fine-to-coarse grid interfaces. In this study, the two challenging test cases of flow over urban-like cubes and flow over a 3-D circular cylinder were simulated using three different scale-resolving turbulence models. Simulations were performed on uniform coarse and fine grids on one hand, and a non-uniform grid on the other, to assess the effect of mesh density and mesh interfaces on the models’ performance. Overall, the proposed One-Equation Scale-Adaptive Simulation (One-Equation SAS) showed the least deviation from the experimental results in both tested cases and on all grid sizes and types when compared to the Shear Stress Transport-Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES) and the Algebraic Wall-Modeled Large Eddy Simulation (WMLES).

2012 ◽  
Vol 594-597 ◽  
pp. 2676-2679
Author(s):  
Zhe Liu

Although the conventional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) model has been widely applied in the industrial and engineering field, it is worthwhile to study whether these models are suitable to investigate the flow filed varying with the time. With the development of turbulence models, the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) model, detached eddy simulation (DES) and large eddy simulation (LES) compensate the disadvantage of RANS model. This paper mainly presents the theory of standard LES model, LES dynamic model and wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity (WALE) LES model. And the square cylinder is selected as the research target to study the flow characteristics around it at Reynolds number 13,000. The influence of different LES models on the flow field around the square cylinder is compared.


2019 ◽  
Vol 128 ◽  
pp. 05002
Author(s):  
Ali Cemal Benim ◽  
Michael Diederich ◽  
Ali Nahavandi

The present paper presents a detailed computational analysis of flow and dispersion in a generic isolated single–zone buildings. First, a grid generation strategy is discussed, that is inspired by a previous computational analysis and a grid independence study. Different turbulence models are appliedincluding two-equation turbulence models, the differential Reynolds Stress Model, Detached Eddy Simulation and Zonal Large Eddy Simulation. The mean velocity and concentration fields are calculated and compared with the measurements. A satisfactory agreement with the experiments is not observed by any of the modelling approaches, indicating the highly demanding flow and turbulence structure of the problem.


2007 ◽  
Vol 111 (1117) ◽  
pp. 153-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Nayyar ◽  
G. N. Barakos ◽  
K. J. Badcock

Numerical analysis of the flow in weapon bays modelled as open rectangular cavities of length-to-depth (L/D) ratio of 5 and width-to-depth (W/D) ratio of 1 with doors-on and doors-off is presented. Flow conditions correspond to Mach and Reynolds numbers (based on cavity length) of 0·85 and 6·783m respectively. Results from unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS), large-eddy simulation (LES) and detached-eddy simulation (DES) are compared with the simulation methods demonstrating the best prediction of this complex flow. It was found that URANS was not able to predict the change of flow characteristics between the doors-on and doors-off configurations. In addition, the energy content of the cavity flow modes was much better resolved with DES and LES. Further, the DES was found to be quite capable for this problem giving accurate results (within 3dB of) experiments and appears to be a promising alternative to LES for modelling massively separated flows.


Author(s):  
Chih-Hua Wu ◽  
Shengwei Ma ◽  
Chang-Wei Kang ◽  
Teck-Bin Arthur Lim ◽  
Rajeev Kumar Jaiman ◽  
...  

Bluff body structures exposed to ocean current can undergo vortex-induced motion (VIM) for certain geometric and physical conditions. Recently, the study of VIM has been gaining attention for many engineering applications, in particular offshore structures such as buoys, FPSOs, semi-submersibles, Spars and TLPs. The present work is a part of a systematic effort to investigate the VIM response of multi-columns floating platform. In real sea condition, floating platforms are in high Reynolds numbers region and flow patterns around structures are turbulent in nature. For the purpose of investigating and simulating accurately the nonlinear dynamic processes of vortex shedding, transport and wake interactions with the bluff body, the fundamental study of VIM around a square column at moderate Reynolds numbers (1500 ≤ Re ≤ 14000) is firstly investigated. In the present work, the transient flow pattern around a free vibrating square cylinder at moderate Reynolds numbers is numerically investigated by an open source CFD toolbox, OpenFOAM. Good consistency and agreement are found between the present numerical findings and that of experiments. The cylinder, with a blockage area of 4.2%, is mounted on an elastic support for free vibration in the transverse direction. Hybrid RANS-LES turbulence models are considered here for accurate prediction of massively separated turbulent wake flow while maintaining the reasonable computational cost. Three hybrid turbulence models, the DDES (Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation, the k-ω SST-DES (Detached Eddy Simulation), and the k–ω SST-SAS (Scale Adaptive Simulation), are studied and their results are compared with the reported experimental measurements. It is shown that the result of simulation with the k–ω SST-SAS model is closer to the reported literature than the other two and therefore, subsequently adopted for all the simulations of our study in this paper. The scaling effect of cylinder length in the spanwise direction is also studied with the objective to reduce the computational cost. From the comparison with the recent experimental measurements, the discrepancy between the present simulations of reducing cylinder length and the experiment increases only when Re ≥ 4000. This might stem from the increase in wavelength of some vortex shedding modes and turbulence intensity variation in the spanwise direction near the cylinder as Re ≥ 4000. The detailed flow patterns, 3D vortex structures (based on Q-criterion) and vortex-shedding modes are presented in this work as well.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saman Beyhaghi ◽  
Ryoichi S. Amano

Turbulent air flow over an NACA 4412 airfoil is investigated computationally. To overcome the near-wall inaccuracies of higher order turbulence models such as large Eddy simulation (LES) and detached Eddy simulation (DES), it is proposed to couple DES with algebraic stress model (ASM). Angles of attack (AoA) of 0 and 14 deg are studied for an airfoil subjected to flow with Re = 1.6 × 106. Distribution of the pressure coefficient at airfoil surface and the chordwise velocity component at four locations near the trailing edge are determined. Results of the baseline DES and hybrid DES–ASM models are compared against published data. It is demonstrated that the proposed hybrid model can slightly improve the flow predictions made by the DES model. Findings of this research can be used for the improvement of the near-wall flow predictions for wind turbine applications.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Durbin ◽  
Zifei Yin ◽  
Elbert Jeyapaul

An adaptive method for detached-eddy simulation (DES) is tested by simulations of flow in a family of three-dimensional (3D) diffusers. The adaptive method either adjusts the model constant or defaults to a bound if the grid is too coarse. On the present grids, the adaptive method adjusts the model constant over most of the flow, without resorting to the default. Data for the diffuser family were created by wall-resolved, large-eddy simulation (LES), using the dynamic Smagorinsky model, for the purpose of testing turbulence models. The family is a parameterized set of geometries that allows one to test whether the pattern of separation is moving correctly from the top to the side wall as the parameter increases. The adaptive DES model is quite accurate in this regard. It is found to predict the mean velocity accurately, but the pressure coefficient is underpredicted. The latter is due to the onset of separation being slightly earlier in the DES than in the LES.


Author(s):  
Kaloki L. Nabutola ◽  
Sandra K. S. Boetcher

Abstract Six different turbulence models were used to simulate the flow within the wheelhouse of a simplified body. The performance of each model was evaluated by comparing the results to data collected from wind tunnel experiments. The performance of large eddy simulation (LES) and detached eddy simulation (DES) is largely dependent on the time step and grid size to accurately resolve turbulent eddies. The standard k–ω and k–ω SST models deviated the most from the experimental data. The standard k–ε model was found to produce the most consistent results which matched experimental data for the simplified body and wheel.


Fluids ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunhui Zhang ◽  
Charles Patrick Bounds ◽  
Lee Foster ◽  
Mesbah Uddin

In today’s road vehicle design processes, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has emerged as one of the major investigative tools for aerodynamics analyses. The age-old CFD methodology based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) approach is still considered as the most popular turbulence modeling approach in automotive industries due to its acceptable accuracy and affordable computational cost for predicting flows involving complex geometries. This popular use of RANS still persists in spite of the well-known fact that, for automotive flows, RANS turbulence models often fail to characterize the associated flow-field properly. It is even true that more often, the RANS approach fails to predict correct integral aerodynamic quantities like lift, drag, or moment coefficients, and as such, they are used to assess the relative magnitude and direction of a trend. Moreover, even for such purposes, notable disagreements generally exist between results predicted by different RANS models. Thanks to fast advances in computer technology, increasing popularity has been seen in the use of the hybrid Detached Eddy Simulation (DES), which blends the RANS approach with Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The DES methodology demonstrated a high potential of being more accurate and informative than the RANS approaches. Whilst evaluations of RANS and DES models on various applications are abundant in the literature, such evaluations on full-car models are relatively fewer. In this study, four RANS models that are widely used in engineering applications, i.e., the realizable k - ε two-layer, Abe–Kondoh–Nagano (AKN) k - ε low-Reynolds, SST k - ω , and V2F are evaluated on a full-scale passenger vehicle with two different front-end configurations. In addition, both cases are run with two DES models to assess the differences between the flow predictions obtained using RANS and DES.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Marconcini ◽  
Roberto Pacciani ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Vittorio Michelassi ◽  
Richard Pichler ◽  
...  

In low-pressure turbines (LPT) at design point, around 60–70% of losses are generated in the blade boundary layers far from end walls, while the remaining 30–40% is controlled by the interaction of the blade profile with the end-wall boundary layer. Increasing attention is devoted to these flow regions in industrial design processes. This paper discusses the end-wall flow characteristics of the T106 profile with parallel end walls at realistic LPT conditions, as described in the experimental setup of Duden, A., and Fottner, L., 1997, “Influence of Taper, Reynolds Number and Mach Number on the Secondary Flow Field of a Highly Loaded Turbine Cascade,” Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., Part A, 211(4), pp.309–320. Calculations are carried out by both Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS), due to its continuing role as the design verification workhorse, and highly resolved large eddy simulation (LES). Part II of this paper focuses on the loss generation associated with the secondary end-wall vortices. Entropy generation and the consequent stagnation pressure losses are analyzed following the aerodynamic investigation carried out in the companion paper (GT2018-76233). The ability of classical turbulence models generally used in RANS to discern the loss contributions of the different vortical structures is discussed in detail and the attainable degree of accuracy is scrutinized with the help of LES and the available test data. The purpose is to identify the flow features that require further modeling efforts in order to improve RANS/unsteady RANS (URANS) approaches and make them able to support the design of the next generation of LPTs.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiangang Wang ◽  
Chengyu Wang ◽  
Filippo Campagnolo ◽  
Carlo L. Bottasso

Abstract. This paper considers the application of a scale-adaptive simulation (SAS) CFD formulation for the modeling of single and waked wind turbines in flows of different turbulence intensities. The SAS approach is compared to a large-eddy simulation (LES) formulation, as well as to experimental measurements performed in a boundary layer wind tunnel with scaled wind turbine models. The motivation for the use of SAS is its significantly reduced computational cost with respect to LES, made possible by the use of less dense grids. Results indicate that the two turbulence models yield in general results that are very similar, in terms of rotor-integral quantities and wake behavior. The matching is less satisfactory in very low turbulence inflows. Given that the computational cost is about one order of magnitude smaller, SAS is found to be an interesting alternative to LES for repetitive runs where one can sacrifice a bit of accuracy for a reduced computational burden.


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