Reynolds stress models applied to canonical shock-turbulence interaction

Shock waves in high-speed flows can drastically alter the nature of Reynolds stresses in a turbulent flow. We study the canonical interaction of homogeneous isotropic turbulence passing through a normal shock, where the shock wave generates significant anisotropy of Reynolds stresses. Existing Reynolds stress models are applied to this canonical problem to predict the amplification of the stream-wise and transverse normal Reynolds stresses across the shock wave. In particular, the efficacy of the different models for the rapid pressure–strain correlation is evaluated by comparing the results with available direct numerical simulation (DNS) data. The model predictions are found to be grossly inaccurate, especially at high-Mach numbers. We propose physics-based improvement to the Reynolds stress-transport equation in the form of shock-unsteadiness effect and enstrophy amplification for turbulent dissipation rate . The resulting model is found to capture the essential physics of Reynolds stress amplification, and match DNS data for a range of Mach numbers. Numerical error encountered at shock waves are also analysed and the model equations are cast in conservative form to obtain physically consistent results with successive grid refinement. Finally, the proposed model for canonical shock-turbulence interaction is generalised to multi-dimensional flows with shock of arbitrary orientation.