Numerical Simulation of a Turbulent Flow in a Channel with Surface Mounted Cubes

In this paper we report on a fourth-order, spectro-consistent simulation of a complex turbulent flow. A spatial discretization of a convection-diffusion equation is termed spectro-consistent if the spectral properties of the convective and diffusive operators are preserved, i.e. convection skew-symmetric; diffusion symmetric positive definite. We consider a fully developed flow in a channel, where a matrix of cubes is placed at a wall of the channel. The Reynolds number (based on the channel width and the mean bulk velocity) is equal to Re = 13,000. The three-dimensional flow around the surface mounted cubes has served at a test case at the 6th ERCOFTAC/IAHR/COST workshop on refined flow modeling (Delft, June 1997). Here, mean velocity profiles as well as Reynolds stresses at various locations in the channel have been computed without using any turbulence models. The results agree well with the available experimental data.