Detached Eddy Simulation of Flow around A-Airfoil

In this study the flow around the Aérospatiale A-airfoil at maximum lift (α = 13.3°) and Re = 2 × 10⁶ is investigated by RANS and DES to quantify the influence of transient flow patterns on the quality of the flow prediction. This flow features a highly unsteady pressure-induced trailing-edge separation. The fairly high Reynolds number makes LES rather unattractive from a practical point of view as the numerical costs scale with ≈ Re^1.95 [9] and lead to an unreasonable effort to carry out these simulations. Like LES, DES is designed to capture the unsteady flow features and consequently is supposed to give results superior to RANS. The RANS solution captures the separation, but is notable to predict transient vortex shedding. The application of DES to a 2D domain leads to results comparable to those obtained by 2D-RANS. Only the 3D-DES is capable of predicting both the unsteady flow features and the development of the boundary layer on the airfoil. As expected, the spanwise resolution has a strong impact on the vortex shedding and on the size of the separation bubble. Attention must be paid to both accommodating the full extent of the flow structures and providing the adequate spatial resolution in order to accomplish satisfactory results – that compare favourably with LES – at only a fraction of computational cost.     

An advanced switching parameter for a hybrid LES/RANS model considering the characteristics of near-wall turbulent length scales

In this study, we proposed an idea for an advanced switching parameter used in a hybrid approach connecting large eddy simulation (LES) with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes modeling [the hybrid LES/RANS (HLR) model]. Although the HLR model is promising way to predict engineering turbulent flows, an important problem is that RANS is always adopted in the near-wall region, even if the grid resolution is fine enough for LES. To overcome this difficulty, the switching parameter proposed here introduced knowledge of the Kolmogorov microscale that is thought to be reasonable for representing the near-wall turbulence. This parameter enabled the present HLR model to be smoothly replaced by a full LES if a grid resolution was fine enough in the near-wall region. To confirm model performance, the present HLR model was applied to numerical simulations of a periodic hill flow as well as fundamental plane channel flows. The model generally provided reasonable predictions for these test cases that include complex turbulence with massive flow separation.     

Highly Resolved LES and URANS of Turbulent Buoyancy-Driven Flow Within Inclined Differentially-Heated Enclosures

In the present study, both LES and unsteady RANS computations are presented, for turbulent natural convection of air inside differentially-heated rectangular tilted cavities using a finite volume code (Code_Saturne), for an aspect ratio of H/L?=?28.6 and Rayleigh number of 0.86×10⁶. Attention is focused on two angles of inclination: 15° to the horizontal with hot lower and cold upper wall, the 15° unstable case, and the mirror image of this case where the angle is the same but with a hot upper and cold lower wall, the 15° stable case. In accordance with recent experimental data, the LES computations for both the stable and unstable tilted cavities returned three-dimensional time-averaged flow fields. In the case of the unstably stratified enclosure, the flow is highly unsteady with coherent turbulent structures in the core of the enclosure. Time-averaged temperature, velocity and resolved turbulence intensities resulting from LES computations show close agreement to measured data. Subsequent comparisons of different URANS schemes with LES are used in order to explore to what extent these models are able to reproduce the large-scale unsteady flow structures. All URANS schemes have been found to be able to reproduce the 3-D unsteady flow features present in the 15° unstable cavity. However, the low-Reynolds-number model tested, as well as requiring a high resolution near-wall grid, also needed a finer grid in the core region than the high-Reynolds-number models, thus making it computationally very expensive. Flow within the 15° stable cavity also shows some 3-D features, although it is significantly less unsteady, and the URANS models tested here have been less successful in reproducing this flow pattern. The overall heat transfer is presented here for both differentially heated enclosures.     

Large Eddy Simulation of a Controlled Diffusion Compressor Cascade

In this research a Controlled Diffusion (CD) compressor cascade stator blade is simulated at a Reynolds number of ??700,000, based on inflow velocity and chord length, using Large Eddy Simulation (LES). A wide range of flow inlet angles are computed, including conditions near the design angle, and at high negative and positive incidence. At all inlet angles the surface pressure distributions are well-predicted by the LES. Near the design angle the computed suction side boundary layer thickness agrees well with experimental data, whilst the pressure side boundary layer is poorly predicted due to the inability of LES to capture natural boundary layer transition on the present grid. A good estimation of the loss is computed near the design angle, whilst at both high positive and negative incidences the loss is less well predicted owing to discrepancies between the computed and experimental boundary layer thickness. At incidences above the design angle a laminar separation bubble forms near the leading edge of the suction surface, which undergoes a transition to turbulence. Similar behaviour is noted on the pressure surface at negative incidence. At high negative incidence contra-rotating vortex pairs are found to form around the leading edge in response to an unsteady stagnation line across the span of the blade. Such structures are not apparent in time-averaged statistical data due to their highly-transient nature.     

Novel Implementation and Assessment of a Digital Filter Based Approach for the Generation of LES Inlet Conditions

A novel implementation of a digital filter based inlet condition generator for Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is presented. The effect of using spatially varying turbulence scales as inputs is investigated; it is found that this has impact on both accuracy and affordability, and has prompted the algorithm implementation changes described in the paper. LES of a channel flow with a periodically repeating constriction was used as a test case. The accuracy of the present simulation using a streamwise periodic boundary condition (PBC) was first established by comparison with a previously published highly resolved LES study. Post-processed statistics from the PBC simulation were then input into a Digital Filter Generator (DFG) algorithm. Three time series were created using the DFG for subsequent use as LES inlet conditions. In the first, as well as inputting the spatially varying first and second moments of the velocity field over the inlet plane from the PBC simulation, the turbulence scales input into the DFG were chosen to be spatially uniform with values specified by an area weighted average across the channel inlet height. In the second and third time-series, the turbulence scales were allowed to change in the wall normal direction, their variation again being deduced from the PBC simulation. These various time series were then used as inlet boundary conditions for LES prediction of the same flow case. Analysis of the results and comparison to the PBC predictions showed that the use of spatially varying turbulence scales increased the accuracy of the simulation in some important areas. However, the cost of generating unsteady inlet conditions using the DFG approach increased significantly with the use of spatially varying turbulence scales. Consequently, a new technique applied as part of the DFG approach is described (used as an ‘on the fly’ method), which significantly reduces the cost of generating LES inlet conditions, even when spatially non-uniform turbulent scales are used.     

Comparative Study of DNS,LES and Hybrid LES/RANS of Turbulent Boundary Layer with Heat Transfer Over 2d Hill

This paper first presents the turbulent heat transfer phenomenon of the boundary layer over a 2-dimensional hill using the direct numerical simulation (DNS). DNS results reveal turbulent heat transfer phenomena in the boundary layer over a 2-dimensional hill affected by the flow acceleration and the concave wall at the foreface of a hill, the convex wall at the top of the hill, and the flow deceleration, separation, and reattachment and the concave wall at the back of the hill. The prediction of turbulent heat transfer, the turbulence models of LES and HLR should be assessed in such heat transfer because these models have seldom been evaluated in the complex turbulent heat transfer. Therefore, this paper also presents evaluations of predictions of LES and HLR in the complicated turbulent heat transfer which is the boundary layer with heat transfer over a 2-dimensional hill. Consequently, this paper obviously shows the detailed turbulent heat transfer phenomena of a boundary layer over a 2-dimensional hill via DNS, and the evaluation results of prediction accuracy of LES and HLR for the heat transfer. LES and HLR give good prediction in comparison with DNS results, but the predicted reattachment and separation points are slightly different from DNS.     

Predicting the wind noise from the pantograph cover of a train

Finite element and boundary element calculations are combined to predict the flow noise radiated from a 1/10th-scale model of an aerodynamic cover used around the pantograph on a train at 250 km h⁻¹. The solutions of the unsteady air flow over the cover and the resulting sound propagation are divided into two parts in order to keep the problem tractable. First the unsteady fluid flow is solved using large-eddy simulation (LES). The pressure histories on the cover are then used to predict the radiated sound, using a boundary element method to solve the Helmholtz equation. The result thus leans heavily on assumptions about the coupling of the two solutions, the propagation of sound in a disturbed medium and the efficacy of LES. The predicted sound pressure levels are compared with experimental measurements made in an anechoic wind tunnel. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The structure of a three-dimensional boundary layer subjected to streamwise-varying spanwise-homogeneous pressure gradient

A spatially-evolving three-dimensional boundary layer, subjected to a streamwise-varying spanwise-homogeneous pressure gradient, equivalent to a body force, is investigated by way of direct numerical simulation. The pressure gradient, prescribed to change its sign half-way along the boundary layer, provokes strong skewing of the velocity vector, with a layer of nearly collateral flow forming close to the wall up to the position of maximum spanwise velocity. A wide range of flow-physical properties have been studied, with particular emphasis on the near-wall layer, including second-moments, major budget contributions and wall-normal two-point correlations of velocity fluctuations and their angles, relative to wall-shear fluctuations. The results illustrate the complexity caused by skewing, including a damping in turbulent mixing and a significant lag between strains and stresses. The study has been undertaken in the context of efforts to develop and test novel hybrid LES–RANS schemes for non-equilibrium near-wall flows, with an emphasis on three-dimensional near-wall straining. Fundamental flow-physical issues aside, the data derived should be of particular relevance to a priori studies of second-moment RANS closure and the development and validation of RANS-type near-wall approximations implemented in LES schemes for high-Reynolds-number complex flows.     

LES Study of Turbulent Boundary Layer Over a Smooth and a Rough 2D Hill Model

Large eddy simulation (LES) is carried out to investigate the turbulent boundary-layer flows over a hill-shaped model with a steep or relatively moderate slope at moderately high Reynolds numbers (Re = O(10³)) defined by the hill height and the velocity at the hill height. The study focuses on the effects of surface roughness and curvature. For Sub-grid Scale (SGS) modeling of LES, both the dynamic Smagorinsky model (DSM) and the dynamic mixed model (DMM) are applied. The behavior of the separated shear layer and the vortex motion are affected by the oncoming turbulence, such that the shear layer comes close to the ground surface, or the size of a separation region becomes small because of the earlier instability of the separated shear layer. Appropriate measures are required to generate the inflow turbulence. The methods of Lund et al. (J. Comput. Phys., 140:233–258, 1998) and Nozawa and Tamura (J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 90:1151–1162, 2002; The 4th European and African Conference on Wind Engineering, 1–6, 2005) are employed to simulate the smooth- and rough-wall turbulent boundary layers in order to generate time-sequential data of inflow turbulence. This paper discusses the unsteady phenomena of the wake flows over the smooth and rough 2D hill-shaped obstacles and aims to clarify the roughness effects on the flow patterns and the turbulence statistics distorted by the hill. Numerical validation is conducted by comparing the simulation results with wind tunnel experiment data for the same hill shape at almost the same Re. The applicability of DSM and DMM are discussed, focusing on the recirculation region behind a steep hill.     

Reconstruction of turbulent fluctuations for hybrid RANS/LES simulations using a Synthetic-Eddy Method

A coupling methodology between an upstream Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulation and a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) further downstream is presented. The focus of this work is on the RANS-to-LES interface inside an attached turbulent boundary layer, where an unsteady LES content has to be explicitly generated from a steady RANS solution. The performance of the Synthetic-Eddy Method (SEM), which generates realistic synthetic eddies at the inflow of the LES, is investigated on a wide variety of turbulent flows, from simple channel and square duct flows to the flow over an airfoil trailing edge. The SEM is compared to other existing methods of generation of synthetic turbulence for LES, and is shown to reduce substantially the distance required to develop realistic turbulence downstream of the inlet.     

Non-zonal detached eddy simulation coupled with a steady RANS solver in the wall region

Xiao and Jenny (2012) proposed an interesting hybrid LES/RANS method in which they use two solvers and solve the RANS and LES equations in the entire computational domain. In the present work this method is simplified and used as a hybrid RANS-LES method, a wall-modeled LES. The two solvers are employed in the entire domain. Near the walls, the flow is governed by the steady RANS solver; drift terms are added to the DES equations to ensure that the time-averaged DES fields agree with the steady RANS field. Away from the walls, the flow is governed by the DES solver; in this region, the RANS field is set to the time-averaged LES field. The disadvantage of traditional DES models is that the RANS models in the near-wall region – which originally were developed and tuned for steady RANS – are used as URANS models where a large part of the turbulence is resolved. In the present method – where steady RANS is used in the near-wall region – the RANS turbulence models are used in a context for which they were developed. In standard DES methods, the near-wall accuracy can be degraded by the unsteady agitation coming from the LES region. It may in the present method be worth while to use an accurate, advanced RANS model. The EARSM model is used in the steady RANS solver. The new method is called NZ S-DES . It is found to substantially improve the predicting capability of the standard DES. A great advantage of the new model is that it is insensitive to the location of the RANS-LES interface.     

Assessment of Turbulence Models for Predicting the Interaction Region in a Wall Jet by Reference to LES Solution and Budgets

Highly-resolved LES and experimental data for a plane wall jet are used to study the characteristics of turbulence-closure proposals, mainly within the framework of second-moment-transport modelling. The study is motivated by the observed importance of diffusive Reynolds-stress transport in the interaction region between the outer shear layer and the near-wall layer of the wall jet, which gives the near-wall flow characteristics that are very different from those of a conventional boundary layer. Comparisons are presented for mean-flow quantities, second moments and budgets. Also included are a priori studies of approximations for the pressure-velocity interaction, pressure-fluctuation-driven transport and turbulent transport of the Reynolds stresses by triple correlations, the last observed to contribute significantly to the stress budgets. The study reveals major defects in the closure approximations for the pressure-velocity interaction terms, especially in the near-wall region. These defects result in a poor representation by the particular second-moment closures investigated of even the integral and mean-flow characteristics of the wall jet.     

Computational analysis and flow structure of a transitional separated-reattached flow over a surface mounted obstacle and a forward-facing step

Large-eddy simulation (LES) of transitional separating-reattaching flow on a two-dimensional square surface mounted obstacle and a forward facing step has been performed using a dynamic sub-grid scale model. The Reynolds number based on the uniform inlet velocity and the obstacle/step height is 4.5 × 10³. The mean LES results for both the obstacle and step flow compare reasonably well with the available experimental and DNS data.

The flow structures upstream of the surface-mounted obstacle (referred to hereafter as obstacle) and the forward-facing step (referred to hereafter as FFS) consist of unstable two-dimensional structures and coherent rib-shaped structures. These structures with the aid of 3D streamline visualisation strongly indicate that the upstream separation bubble is a closed one rather than an open one in the sense that there is little evidence to suggest that there is fluid injection from the upstream separation region into the downstream separated region for the two geometries. The spectra and time history for the velocities and pressure fields at locations immediately upstream of the obstacle and FFS (including the recirculation region) were analysed using both the Fourier and wavelet transforms and revealed the unsteady nature of the recirculation region upstream of the obstacle and FFS.

The transition process has been elucidated using both 2D and 3D flow visualisation of the flow. In both geometries (obstacle and FFS), the separated boundary layer downstream of the leading edge shows 2D nature and roll-up shortly downstream of the separation line leading to 2D K-H rolls to be shed from the leading edge. Coherent structures such as the λ-shaped and rib-like vortices commonly associated with a flat plate boundary layer and also found in the separated-reattached flow of a blunt leading edge plate aligned horizontally to a flow are not common in the separated-reattached flow over the obstacle and FFS.     

Assessment of Reynolds stresses tensor reconstruction methods for synthetic turbulent inflow conditions. Application to hybrid RANS/LES methods

Hybrid or zonal RANS/LES approaches are recognized as the most promising way to accurately simulate complex unsteady flows under current computational limitations. One still open issue concerns the transition from a RANS to a LES or WMLES resolution in the stream-wise direction, when near wall turbulence is involved. Turbulence content has then to be prescribed at the transition to prevent from turbulence decay leading to possible flow relaminarization. The present paper aims to propose an efficient way to generate this switch, within the flow, based on a synthetic turbulence inflow condition, named Synthetic Eddy Method (SEM). As the knowledge of the whole Reynolds stresses is often missing, the scope of this paper is focused on generating the quantities required at the SEM inlet from a RANS calculation, namely the first and second order statistics of the aerodynamic field. Three different methods based on two different approaches are presented and their capability to accurately generate the needed aerodynamic values is investigated. Then, the ability of the combination SEM + Reconstruction method to manufacture well-behaved turbulence is demonstrated through spatially developing flat plate turbulent boundary layers. In the mean time, important intrinsic features of the Synthetic Eddy method are pointed out. The necessity of introducing, within the SEM, accurate data, with regards to the outer part of the boundary layer, is illustrated. Finally, user’s guidelines are given depending on the Reynolds number based on the momentum thickness, since one method is suitable for low Reynolds number while the second is dedicated to high ones with a transition located around Re_θ = 3000.     

A three-velocity-component laser-Doppler velocimeter for measurements inside the linear compressor cascade

A 24′′ (610 mm) access laser-Doppler velocimeter (LDV) system was developed to make simultaneous three-velocity-component measurements in a low speed linear cascade wind tunnel with moving wall simulation. The probe has a 610 mm access length and achieves a measurement spatial resolution of 100 μm by using off-axis optical heads. With the relatively large access length, the LDV probe allows for measurements from the side of a wind tunnel instead of through the tunnel floor, while the high spatial resolution allows for quality near-wall measurements. The probe has been tested in a zero-pressure gradient 2D turbulent boundary layer and the test results agree well with the experimental data measured with different LDV systems and hot-wire anemometery for the boundary layer flows. The energy spectral density was estimated using a slot correlation, and Von Kármán’s model for the energy-spectrum function was used to analyze the measured spectral data to estimate the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, which compares favorably with the measured production values in the log-layer region of the turbulent boundary layer. Measurements are presented for the moving endwall boundary layer at the inlet of the linear compressor cascade facility to validate the capability of this LDV for tip leakage flow measurements. These results indicate that the moving endwall reduces velocity gradients in the near-wall region and results in less production of Reynolds stresses and turbulent kinetic energy compared to the stationary endwall case.     

The effect of inflow conditions on the transition to turbulence in large eddy simulations of spatially developing mixing layers

Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of spatially developing turbulent mixing layers have been performed for flows of uniform density and Reynolds numbers of up to 50,000 based on the visual thickness of the layer and the velocity difference across it. On a fine LES grid, a validation simulation performed with a hyperbolic tangent inflow profile produces flow statistics that compare extremely well with reference Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data. An inflow profile derived from laminar Blasius profiles produces a flow that is significantly different to the reference DNS, particularly with respect to the initial development of the flow. When compared with experimental data, however, it is the boundary layer-type inflow simulation produces the better prediction of the flow statistics, including the mean transition location. It is found that the boundary layer inflow condition is more unstable than the hyperbolic tangent inlet profile. A suitably designed coarse LES grid produces good predictions of the mean transition location with boundary layer inflow conditions at a low computational cost. The results suggest that hyperbolic tangent functions may produce unreliable DNS data when used as the initial condition for studies of the transition in the mixing layer flow.     

Hybrid LES-RANS: An approach to make LES applicable at high Reynolds number

The main bottle neck for using large eddy simulations (LES) at high Reynolds number is the requirement of very fine meshes near walls. Hybrid LES-Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) was invented to get rid of this limitation. In this method, unsteady RANS (URANS) is used near walls and away from walls LES is used. The matching between URANS and LES takes place in the inner log-region. In the present paper, a method to improve standard LES-RANS is evaluated. The improvement consists of adding instantaneous turbulent fluctuations (forcing conditions) at the matching plane in order to provide the equations in the LES region with relevant turbulent structures. The fluctuations are taken from a DNS of a generic boundary layer. Simulations of fully developed channel flow and plane asymmetric diffuser flow are presented. Hybrid LES-RANS is used both with and without forcing conditions.     

Simulation of supersonic turbulent flow in the vicinity of an inclined backward-facing step

Large eddy simulation (LES) is a viable and powerful tool to analyse unsteady three-dimensional turbulent flows. In this article, the method of LES is used to compute a plane turbulent supersonic boundary layer subjected to different pressure gradients. The pressure gradients are generated by allowing the flow to pass in the vicinity of an expansion–compression ramp (inclined backward-facing step with leeward-face angle of 25°) for an upstream Mach number of 2.9. The inflow boundary condition is the main problem for all turbulent wall-bounded flows. An approach to solve this problem is to extract instantaneous velocities, temperature and density data from an auxiliary simulation (inflow generator). To generate an appropriate realistic inflow condition to the inflow generator itself the rescaling technique for compressible flows is used. In this method, Morkovin's hypothesis, in which the total temperature fluctuations are neglected compared with the static temperature fluctuations, is applied to rescale and generate the temperature profile at inlet. This technique was successfully developed and applied by the present author for an LES of subsonic three-dimensional boundary layer of a smooth curved ramp. The present LES results are compared with the available experimental data as well as numerical data. The positive impact of the rescaling formulation of the temperature is proven by the convincing agreement of the obtained results with the experimental data compared with published numerical work and sheds light on the quality of the developed compressible inflow generator.     

A multiscale approach to hybrid RANS/LES wall modeling within a high-order discontinuous Galerkin scheme using function enrichment

We present a novel approach to hybrid Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)/ large eddy simulation (LES) wall modeling based on function enrichment, which overcomes the common problem of the RANS-LES transition and enables coarse meshes near the boundary. While the concept of function enrichment as an efficient discretization technique for turbulent boundary layers has been proposed in an earlier article by Krank & Wall (A new approach to wall modeling in LES of incompressible flow via function enrichment. J Comput Phys. 2016;316:94-116), the contribution of this work is a rigorous derivation of a new multiscale turbulence modeling approach and a corresponding discontinuous Galerkin discretization scheme. In the near-wall area, the Navier-Stokes equations are explicitly solved for an LES and a RANS component in one single equation. This is done by providing the Galerkin method with an independent set of shape functions for each of these two methods; the standard high-order polynomial basis resolves turbulent eddies, where the mesh is sufficiently fine and the enrichment automatically computes the ensemble-averaged flow if the LES mesh is too coarse. As a result of the derivation, the RANS model is applied solely to the RANS degrees of freedom, which effectively prevents the typical issue of a log-layer mismatch in attached boundary layers. As the full Navier-Stokes equations are solved in the boundary layer, spatial refinement gradually yields wall-resolved LES with exact boundary conditions. Numerical tests show the outstanding characteristics of the wall model regarding grid independence, superiority compared to equilibrium wall models in separated flows, and achieve a speed-up by two orders of magnitude compared to wall-resolved LES.