We provide analytical and numerical results concerning multi-scale correlations between the resolved velocity field and the subgrid-scale (SGS) stress-tensor in large eddy simulations (LES). Following previous studies for Navier-Stokes equations (NSE), we derive the exact hierarchy of LES equations governing the spatio-temporal evolution of velocity structure functions of any order. The aim is to assess the influence of the sub-grid model on the inertial range intermittency. We provide a series of predictions, within the multifractal theory, for the scaling of correlation involving the SGS stress and we compare them against numerical results from high-resolution Smagorinsky LES and from a-priori filtered data generated from direct numerical simulations (DNS). We find that LES data generally agree very well with filtered DNS results and with the multifractal prediction for all leading terms in the balance equations. Discrepancies are measured for some of the subleading terms involving cross-correlation between resolved velocity increments and the SGS tensor or the SGS energy transfer, suggesting that there must be room to improve the SGS modelisation to further extend the inertial range properties for any fixed LES resolution.
Assuming a general constitutive relation for the turbulent stresses in terms of the local large-scale velocity gradient, we constructed a class of subgrid-scale models for large-eddy simulation that are consistent with important physical and mathematical properties. In particular, they preserve symmetries of the Navier-Stokes equations and exhibit the proper near-wall scaling. They furthermore show desirable dissipation behavior and are capable of describing nondissipative effects. We provided examples of such physically-consistent models and showed that existing subgrid-scale models do not al…
We put forth a dynamic modeling framework for sub-grid parametrization of large eddy simulation of turbulent flows based upon the use of the approximate deconvolution procedure to compute the Smagorinsky constant self-adaptively from the resolved flow quantities. Our numerical assessments for solving the Burgers turbulence problem shows that the proposed approach could be used as a viable tool to address the turbulence closure problem due to its flexibility.
Structural subgrid stress models for large eddy simulation often allow for backscatter of energy from unresolved to resolved turbulent scales, but excessive model backscatter can eventually result in numerical instability. A commonly employed strategy to overcome this issue is to set predicted subgrid stresses to zero in regions of model backscatter. This clipping procedure improves the stability of structural models, however, at the cost of reduced correlation between the predicted subgrid stresses and the exact subgrid stresses. In this article, we propose an alternative strategy that remove…
We study the construction of subgrid-scale models for large-eddy simulation of incompressible turbulent flows. In particular, we aim to consolidate a systematic approach of constructing subgrid-scale models, based on the idea that it is desirable that subgrid-scale models are consistent with the mathematical and physical properties of the Navier-Stokes equations and the turbulent stresses. To that end, we first discuss in detail the symmetries of the Navier-Stokes equations, and the near-wall scaling behavior, realizability and dissipation properties of the turbulent stresses. We furthermore s…
We present a new approach for constructing data-driven subgrid stress models for large eddy simulation of turbulent flows. The key to our approach is representation of model input and output tensors in the filtered strain rate eigenframe. Provided inputs and outputs are selected and non-dimensionalized in a suitable manner, this yields a model form that is symmetric, Galilean invariant, rotationally invariant, reflectionally invariant, and unit invariant. We use this model form to train a simple and efficient neural network model using only one time step of filtered direct numerical simulation…
We construct a new subgrid scale (SGS) stress model for representing the small scale effects in large eddy simulation (LES) of incompressible flows. We use the covariance tensor for representing the Reynolds stress and include Clark's model for the cross stress. The Reynolds stress is obtained analytically from Cinlar random velocity field, which is based on vortex structures observed in the ocean at the subgrid scale. The validity of the model is tested with turbulent channel flow computed in OpenFOAM. It is compared with the most frequently used Smagorinsky and one-equation eddy SGS models t…
For helical isotropic turbulence, an improved two-term helical subgrid-scale (SGS) model is proposed and four types of dynamic methods are given to do large-eddy simulation (LES), which include the standard dynamic procedure, the least quatratic sum dynamic procedure, the dynamic procedure with single con- straint of helicity dissipation and the dynamic one with dual constraints of energy and helicity dissipation. Tested a priori and a posteriori in both steady and decaying helical isotropic turbulence, the four types of dynamic helical models and the dynamic Smogorinsky model are compared wit…
The subgrid-scale modelling of a low Mach number strongly anisothermal turbulent flow is investigated using direct numerical simulations. The study is based on the filtering of the low Mach number equations, suited to low Mach number flows with highly variable fluid properties. The results are relevant to formulations of the filtered low Mach number equations established with the classical filter or the Favre filter. The two most significant subgrid terms of the filtered low Mach number equations are considered. They are associated with the momentum convection and the density-velocity correlat…
Large Eddy Simulations of turbulent flows are powerful tools used in many engineering and geophysical settings. Choosing the right value of the free parameters for their subgrid scale models is a crucial task for which the current methods present several shortcomings. Using a technique called nudging we show that Large Eddy Simulations can synchronize to data coming from a high-resolution direct numerical simulation of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. Furthermore, we found that the degree of synchronization is dependent on the value of the parameters of the subgrid scale models utilized, …
In large eddy simulations, the Reynolds averages of nonlinear terms are not directly computable in terms of the resolved variables and require a closure hypothesis or model, known as a subgrid scale term. Inspired by the renormalization group (RNG),we introduce an expansion for the unclosed terms, carried out explicitly to all orders. In leading order, this expansion defines subgrid scale unclosed terms, which we relate to the dynamic subgrid scale closure models. The expansion, which generalizes the Leonard stress for closure analysis, suggests a systematic higher order determination of the m…
We propose a model for assessing the unresolved wrinkling factor in LES of turbulent premixed combustion. It relies essentially on a power-law dependence of the wrinkling factor to the filter size and an original expression for the active corrugating strain rate. The latter is written as a product of an efficiency function which accounts for viscous effects and the kinematic constraint of Peters, by a recent expression for the turbulent strain intensity. Yields functional expressions for the fractal dimension and the inner cut-off length scale, the latter being (i) filter-size independent and …
We study the dispersion characteristics of slightly buoyant droplets in a turbulent jet using large eddy simulations (LES). The droplet number density fields are represented using an Eulerian approach with the dispersed phase modelled using the Fast-Eulerian method (Ferry & Balachandar 2001) that includes the droplet rise velocity. Radial concentration profiles and turbulent concentration fluxes for droplets of different sizes are analyzed to quantify the "trajectory crossing effect", when relative motions between particles and turbulent eddies tend to reduce turbulent diffusion. For finer LES…
This paper studies the large-eddy simulation (LES) of isothermal turbulent channel flows. We investigate zero-equation algebraic models without wall function or wall model: functional models, structural models and mixed models. In addition to models from the literature, new models are proposed and their relevance is examined. Dynamic versions of each type of model are also analysed. The performance of the subgrid-scale models is assessed using the same finite difference numerical method and physical configuration. The friction Reynolds number of the simulations is 180. Three different mesh res…
The original goal of Large Eddy Simulations of fully developed turbulent flows was to accurately describe large-scale flow features ${\bf u}(Δ)$ at the scales $r\geq Δ$ where $Δ$ is a size of computational mesh. The effect of small-scale velocity fluctuations ($r<Δ$) was to be accounted for by effective transport coefficients (subgrid models) in the coarse-grained Navier-Stokes equations. It is shown in this paper that, due to anomalous inertial range scaling (intermittency) of the moments of velocity difference, the existing subgrid models are intrinsically incapable of quantitatively describ…
Rotating turbulent flows form a challenging test case for large-eddy simulation (LES). We, therefore, propose and validate a new subgrid-scale (SGS) model for such flows. The proposed SGS model consists of a dissipative eddy viscosity term as well as a nondissipative term that is nonlinear in the rate-of-strain and rate-of-rotation tensors. The two corresponding model coefficients are a function of the vortex stretching magnitude. Therefore, the model is consistent with many physical and mathematical properties of the Navier-Stokes equations and turbulent stresses, and is easy to implement. We…
With the continuing progress in large eddy simulations (LES), and ever increasing computational resources, it is currently possible to numerically solve the time-dependent and anisotropic large scales of turbulence in a large variety of flows. For some applications this large-scale resolution is satisfactory. However, a wide range of engineering problems involve flows at very large Reynolds numbers where the subgrid scale dynamics of a practical LES are critically important to design and yet are out of reach given the computational demands of solving the Navier Stokes equations; this difficult…
An analysis of the turbulence-radiation interaction in the framework of large eddy simulation (LES) is presented. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of statistical steady forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence is used to evaluate the relevance of the unclosed terms of the filtered radiative transfer equation (RTE) and to study the influence of parameters like the optical thickness and the turbulence intensity. LES without subgrid-scale models of the filtered RTE has also been investigated. Neglecting the subgrid-scale fluctuations of radiation has proved to be an accurate assumption in various…
Large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulence in complex geometries and domains is often conducted with high aspect ratio resolution cells of varying shapes and orientations. The effects of such anisotropic resolution are often simplified or neglected in subgrid model formulation. Here, we examine resolution induced anisotropy and demonstrate that, even for isotropic turbulence, anisotropic resolution induces mild resolved Reynolds stress anisotropy and significant anisotropy in second-order resolved velocity gradient statistics. In large eddy simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence with a…
Subgrid-scale (SGS) models are critical in large-eddy simulations (LES) of turbulent flows. In this paper we conduct a comparative study on different SGS models, including one-k-equation, wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity (WALE), Sigma and shear-constrained model. Wall-resolved LES simulations of channel flows are performed with a finite volume code at shear Reynolds number Re_τ= 395. In the simulations, the buffer sublayer turns out to be the most sensitive to the SGS model. Through the analysis of the mean velocity, the second-order moments, the SGS viscosity and the fluctuating vorticities…
Two approaches for closing the turbulence subgrid-scale stress tensor in terms of matrix exponentials are introduced and compared. The first approach is based on a formal solution of the stress transport equation in which the production terms can be integrated exactly in terms of matrix exponentials. This formal solution of the subgrid-scale stress transport equation is shown to be useful to explore special cases, such as the response to constant velocity gradient, but neglecting pressure-strain correlations and diffusion effects. The second approach is based on an Eulerian-Lagrangian change o…
The development of reduced models for complex multiscale problems remains one of the principal challenges in computational physics. The optimal prediction framework of Chorin et al., which is a reformulation of the Mori-Zwanzig (M-Z) formalism of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, provides a methodology for the development of mathematically-derived reduced models of dynamical systems. Several promising models have emerged from the optimal prediction community and have found application in molecular dynamics and turbulent flows. In this work, a new M-Z-based closure model that addresses som…
In large-eddy simulations, subgrid-scale (SGS) processes are parameterized as a function of filtered grid-scale variables. First-order, algebraic SGS models are based on the eddy-viscosity assumption, which does not always hold for turbulence. Here we apply supervised deep neural networks (DNNs) to learn SGS stresses from a set of neighboring coarse-grained velocity from direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of the atmospheric boundary layer at friction Reynolds numbers Re_τ up to 1243 without invoking the eddy-viscosity assumption. The DNN model was found to produce higher correlation of SGS st…
The combination of the high-order accurate spectral difference discretization on unstructured grids with subgrid-scale modelling is investigated for large eddy simulation of a muffler at Re = 4.64 10^4 and low Mach number. The subgrid-scale stress tensor is modelled by the wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity model with a cut-off length which is a decreasing function of the order of accuracy of the scheme. Numerical results indicate that although the high-order solver without subgrid-scale modelling is already able to capture well the features of the flow, the coupling with the wall-adapting loc…
A new tuning-free subgrid-scale model, termed `locally-averaged scale-dependent dynamic' (LASDD) model, is developed and implemented in large-eddy simulations (LESs) of stable boundary layers. The new model dynamically computes the Smagorinsky coefficient and the subgrid-scale Prandtl number based on the local dynamics of the resolved velocity and temperature fields. Overall, the agreement between the statistics of the LES-generated turbulence and some well-established empirical formulations and theoretical predictions (e.g., Nieuwstadt's local scaling hypothesis) is remarkable. The results sh…
An innovative \textit{deep learning} approach has been adopted to formulate the eddy-viscosity for large eddy simulation (LES) of wall-bounded turbulent flows. A deep neural network (DNN) is developed which learns to evaluate the eddy-viscosity from a dataset generated for a channel flow at friction Reynolds number $Re_τ = 395$ using the Dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid-scale model. Later this DNN is employed to predict the eddy-viscosity for a number of grid configurations for channel flow at $Re_τ = 395$ and $590$. The statistics computed from the DNN based LES model show an excellent match with …
The effects of passive scalar anisotropy on subgrid-scale (SGS) physics and modeling for Large-Eddy Simulations are studied experimentally. Measurements are performed across a moderate Reynolds number wake flow generated by a heated cylinder, using an array of four X-wire and four cold-wire probes. By varying the separation distance among probes in the array, we obtain filtered and subgrid quantities at three different filter sizes. We compute several terms that comprise the subgrid dissipation tensor of kinetic energy and scalar-variance and test for isotropic behavior, as a function of filte…
Current design constraints have encouraged the studies of aeroacoustics fields around compressible jet flows. The present work addresses the numerical study of subgrid scale modeling for unsteady turbulent jet flows as a preliminary step for future aeroacoustic analyses of main engine rocket plumes. An in-house large eddy simulation (LES) tool is developed in order to reproduce high fidelity results of compressible jet flows. In the present study, perfectly expanded jets are considered because the authors want to emphasize the effects of the jet mixing phenomena. The large eddy simulation form…
Direct numerical simulations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are not feasible yet for most practical turbulent flows. Therefore, dynamically less complex mathematical formulations are necessary for coarse-grained simulations. In this regard, eddy-viscosity models for Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) are probably the most popular example thereof. This type of models requires the calculation of a subgrid characteristic length which is usually associated with the local grid size. For isotropic grids this is equal to the mesh step. However, for anisotropic or unstructured grids, such as t…
In the present study, we investigate different data-driven parameterizations for large eddy simulation of two-dimensional turbulence in the \emph{a priori} settings. These models utilize resolved flow field variables on the coarser grid to estimate the subgrid-scale stresses. We use data-driven closure models based on localized learning that employs multilayer feedforward artificial neural network (ANN) with point-to-point mapping and neighboring stencil data mapping, and convolutional neural network (CNN) fed by data snapshots of the whole domain. The performance of these data-driven closure …
A non-intrusive data assimilation methodology is developed to improve the statistical predictions of large-eddy simulations (LES). The ensemble-variational (EnVar) approach aims to minimize a cost function that is defined as the discrepancy between LES predictions and reference statistics from experiments or, in the present demonstration, independent direct numerical simulations (DNS). This methodology is applied to adjust the Smagorinsky subgrid model and obtain data assimilated LES (DA-LES) which accurately estimate the statistics of turbulent channel flow. To separately control the mean and…
A nonlocal subgrid-scale stress (SGS) model is developed based on the convolution neural network (CNN), a powerful supervised data-driven approach. The CNN is an ideal approach to naturally consider nonlocal spatial information in prediction due to its wide receptive field. The CNN-based models used here only take primitive flow variables as input, then the flow features are automatically extracted without any $priori$ guidance. The nonlocal models trained by direct numerical simulation (DNS) data of a turbulent channel flow at $Re_τ=178$ are accessed in both the $priori$ and $posteriori$ test…
Among existing subgrid scale models for large-eddy simulation (LES) some are time-reversible in the sense that the dynamics evolve backwards in time after a transformation $\bm u \rightarrow -\bm u$ at every point in space. In practice, reversible subgrid models reduce the numerical stability of the simulations since the effect of the subgrid scales is no longer strictly dissipative. This lack of stability constitutes often a criterion to reject this kind of models. The aim of this paper is to examine whether time-reversibility can constitute a criterion that a subgrid model has to fulfill, or…
Large-eddy simulations of incompressible Newtonian fluid flows with approximate deconvolution models based on the van Cittert method are reported. The Legendre spectral element method is used for the spatial discretization to solve the filtered Navier--Stokes equations. A novel variant of approximate deconvolution models blended with a mixed scale model using a dynamic evaluation of the subgrid-viscosity constant is proposed. This model is validated by comparing the large-eddy simulation with the direct numerical simulation of the flow in a lid-driven cubical cavity, performed at a Reynolds nu…
This article deals with large-eddy simulations of 3D incompressible laryngeal flow followed by acoustic simulations of human phonation of five cardinal english vowels /u, i, \textipa{A}, o, æ/. The flow and aeroacoustic simulations were performed in OpenFOAM and in-house code openCFS, respectively. Given the large variety of scales in the flow and acoustics, the simulation is separated into two steps: (1) computing the flow in the larynx using the finite volume method on a fine 2.2M grid followed by (2) computing the sound sources separately and wave propagation to the radiation zone around th…
Large-eddy simulations of the turbulent flow in a lid-driven cubical cavity have been carried out at a Reynolds number of 12000 using spectral element methods. Two distinct subgrid-scales models, namely a dynamic Smagorinsky model and a dynamic mixed model, have been both implemented and used to perform long-lasting simulations required by the relevant time scales of the flow. All filtering levels make use of explicit filters applied in the physical space (on an element-by-element approach) and spectral (modal) spaces. The two subgrid-scales models are validated and compared to available exper…
The issue of the parameterization of small scale (``subgrid'') turbulence is addressed in the context of passive scalar transport. We focus on the Kraichnan advection model which lends itself to the analytical investigation of the closure problem. We derive systematically the dynamical equations which rule the evolution of the coarse-grained scalar field. At the lowest-order approximation in $l/r$, $l$ being the characteristic scale of the filter defining the coarse-grained scalar field and $r$ the inertial range separation, we recover the classical eddy-diffusivity parameterization of small s…
The present work is concerned with a study of large eddy simulations (LES) of unsteady turbulent jet flows. In particular, the present analysis is focused on the effects of the subgrid-scale modeling used when a second-order spatial discretization methodology is employed for the numerical simulations. The present effort addresses perfectly expanded supersonic jets, because the authors want to emphasize the effects of the jet mixing phenomena. The LES formulation is discretized using the finite difference approach, after the equations are rewritten in a generalized coordinate system. Both space…
