The predictive accuracy of wall-modelled LES is influenced by a combination of the subgrid model, the wall model, the numerical dissipation induced primarily by the convective numerical scheme, and also by the density and topology of the computational grid. The latter factor is of particular importance for industrial flow problems, where unstructured grids are typically employed due to the necessity to handle complex geometries. Here, a systematic simulation-based study is presented, investigating the effect of grid-cell type on the predictive accuracy of wall-modelled LES in the framework of a general-purpose finite-volume solver. Following standard practice for meshing near-wall regions, it is proposed to use prismatic cells. Three candidate shapes for the base of the prisms are considered: a triangle, a quadrilateral, and an arbitrary polygon. The cell-centre distance is proposed as a metric to determine the spatial resolution of grids with different cell types. The simulation campaign covers two test cases with attached boundary layers: fully-developed turbulent channel flow, and a zero-pressure-gradient flat-plate turbulent boundary layer. A grid construction strategy is employed, which adapts the grid metric to the outer length scale of the boundary layer. The results are compared with DNS data concerning mean wall shear stress and profiles of flow statistics. The principle outcome is that unstructured simulations may provide the same accuracy as simulations on structured orthogonal hexahedral grids. The choice of base shape of the near-wall cells has a significant impact on the computational cost, but in terms of accuracy appears to be a factor of secondary importance.
In this work, we propose a single formula for the law of the wall, which is dubbed as the logarithmic-exponential (LOG-EXP) formula, for predicting the mean velocity profile in different regions near the wall. And then a feedforward neural network (FNN), whose inputs and training data are based on this new formula, is trained for the wall-modelled large-eddy simulation (WMLES) of turbulent channel flows. The direct numerical simulation (DNS) data of turbulent channel flows is used to evaluate the performance of both the formula and the FNN. Compared with the Werner-Wengle (WW) model for the WM…
A simple variant of recycling and rescaling method to generate inflow turbulence using unstructured grid CFD codes is presented. The method has been validated on large eddy simulation of spatially developing flat plate turbulent boundary layer. The proposed rescaling algorithm is based on the momentum thickness which is more robust and essentially obviates the need of finding the edge of the turbulent boundary layer in unstructured grid codes. Extension of this algorithm to hybrid RANS/LES type of approaches and for wall-bounded turbomachinery flows is also discussed. Results from annular diff…
The accuracy and computational cost of a large eddy simulation are highly dependent on the computational grid. Building optimal grids manually from a priori knowledge is not feasible in most practical use cases; instead, solution-adaptive strategies can provide a robust and cost-efficient method to generate a grid with the desired accuracy. We adapt the grid-adaptation algorithm developed by Toosi and Larsson to a Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Elements Method (DGSEM) and show its potential on fully unstructured grids. The core of the method is the computation of the estimated modeling residu…
This work presents a feature-rich open-source library for wall-modelled large-eddy simulation (WMLES), which is a turbulence modelling approach that reduces the computational cost of traditional (wall-resolved) LES by introducing special treatment of the inner region of turbulent boundary layers (TBLs). The library is based on OpenFOAM and enhances the general-purpose LES solvers provided by this software with state-of-the-art wall modelling capability. In particular, the included wall models belong to the class of wall-stress models that account for the under-resolved turbulent structures by …
In this paper we present a new technique for efficiently implementing Large Eddy Simulation with the Discontin- uous Galerkin method on unstructured meshes. In particular, we will focus upon the approach to overcome the computational complexity that the additional degrees of freedom in Discontinuous Galerkin methods entail. The turbulence algorithms have been implemented within Fluidity, an open-source computational fluid dynamics solver. The model is tested with the well known backward-facing step problem, and is shown to concur with published results.
A Novel Explicit Filter for the Approximate Deconvolution in Large-Eddy Simulation on General Unstructured Grids: A posteriori tests on highly stretched grids
Marine hydrokinetic (MHK) power generation systems enable harvesting energy from waterways without the need for water impoundment. A major research challenge for numerical simulations of field-scale MHK farms stems from the large disparity in scales between the size of waterway and the energy harvesting device. We propose a large-eddy simulation (LES) framework to perform high-fidelity, multi-resolution simulations of MHK arrays in a real-life marine environment using a novel unstructured Cartesian flow solver coupled with a sharp-interface immersed boundary method. The potential of the method…
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…
Wall-modelled large-eddy simulation of turbulent channel flow with unstable stratification
Institute of Extreme Mechanics, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学航空学院极端力学研究所）；National Key Laboratory of Aircraft Configuration Design, Key Laboratory for Extreme Mechanics of Aircraft of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology（飞机总体设计全国重点实验室、工业和信息化部飞机极端力学重点实验室）
In Large-Eddy simulation of particle-laden flow, the effect of the unresolved scales on the particles needs to be modelled. In this work we analyse three very promising models, namely the approximate deconvolution method (ADM) which was proposed for particle-laden flow independently by Kuerten (Phys. Fluids 18, 2006) and Shotorban and Mashayek (Phys. Fluids 17, 2005) and two stochastic models, proposed by Shotorban and Mashayek (J. Turbul. 7, 2006) and Simonin et al. (Appl. Sci. Res. 51, 1993). We present results from a priori and a posteriori analysis of these models in isotropic turbulence a…
A recently developed so-called explicit algebraic Reynolds-stress (EARS) model is applied to a transitioning atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The simulation describes a diurnal cycle with a deep convective ABL during daytime and an extremely thin and stably stratified ABL during nighttime. The predictions of the EARS model are compared to large-eddy simulations (LES) of Couvreux \emph{et al.}~ (Bound Layer Meteorol 176:369-400, 2020). The model simulation is extended in time in order to study several consecutive diurnal cycles. The EARS model uses the same parametrization and model coefficien…
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…
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…
The grid-to-rod fretting (GTRF) problem in pressurized water reactors is a flow-induced vibration problem that results in wear and failure of the fuel rods in nuclear assemblies. In order to understand the fluid dynamics of GTRF and to build an archival database of turbulence statistics for various configurations, implicit large-eddy simulations of time-dependent single-phase turbulent flow have been performed in 3x3 and 5x5 rod bundles with a single grid spacer. To assess the computational mesh and resolution requirements, a method for quantitative assessment of unstructured meshes with no-sl…
A new methodology based on energy flux similarity is suggested in this paper for large eddy simulation (LES) of transitional and turbulent flows. Existing knowledge reveals that the energy cascade generally exists in transitional and turbulent flows with different distributions, and the characteristic quantity of scale interaction in energy cascade processes is energy flux. Therefore, energy flux similarity is selected as the basic criterion to secure the flow field getting from LES highly similar to the real flow field. Through a priori tests, we find that the energy flux from the tensor-diff…
The ability of linear stochastic response analysis to estimate coherent motions is investigated in turbulent channel flow at friction Reynolds number Re$_τ$ = 1007. The analysis is performed for spatial scales characteristic of buffer-layer and large-scale motions by separating the contributions of different temporal frequencies. Good agreement between the measured spatio-temporal power spectral densities and those estimated by means of the resolvent is found when the effect of turbulent Reynolds stresses, modelled with an eddy-viscosity associated to the turbulent mean flow, is included in th…
In the context of many applications of turbulent multi-phase flows, knowledge of the dispersed phase size distribution and its evolution is critical to predicting important macroscopic features. We use a population dynamics model for polydisperse droplet distributions specifically adapted to a LES framework including a model for droplet breakup due to turbulence, neglecting coalescence. Following earlier methods used in the Reynolds averaged Navier--Stokes framework, the droplet breakup due to turbulent fluctuations is modelled by treating droplet-eddy collisions as in kinetic theory of gases.…
We consider the induction of magnetic field in flows of electrically conducting fluid at low magnetic Prandtl number and large kinetic Reynolds number. Using the separation between the magnetic and kinetic diffusive lengthscales, we propose a new numerical approach. The coupled magnetic and fluid equations are solved using a mixed scheme, where the magnetic field fluctuations are fully resolved and the velocity fluctuations at small scale are modelled using a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) scheme. We study the response of a forced Taylor-Green flow to an externally applied field: tology of the me…
We present here a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of Lillgrund offshore wind farm, which is located in the Oresund Strait between Sweden and Denmark. The simulation combines a dynamic representation of wind turbines embedded within a Large-Eddy Simulation CFD solver, and uses hr-adaptive meshing to increase or decrease mesh resolution where required. This allows the resolution of both large scale flow structures around the wind farm, and local flow conditions at individual turbines; consequently, the response of each turbine to local conditions can be modelled, as well as the res…
Wall modelling in large-eddy simulation (LES) is necessary to overcome the prohibitive near-wall resolution requirements in high-Reynolds-number turbulent flows. Most existing wall models rely on assumptions about the state of the boundary layer and require a priori prescription of tunable coefficients. They also impose the predicted wall stress by replacing the no-slip boundary condition at the wall with a Neumann boundary condition in the wall-parallel directions while maintaining the no-transpiration condition in the wall-normal direction. In the present study, we first motivate and analyse…
The dynamic model for large-eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows requires test filtering the resolved velocity fields in order to determine model coefficients. However, test filtering is costly to perform in large-eddy simulation of complex geometry flows, especially on unstructured grids. The objective of this work is to develop and test an approximate but less costly dynamic procedure which does not require test filtering. The proposed method is based on Taylor series expansions of the resolved velocity fields. Accuracy is governed by the derivative schemes used in the calculation and th…
We study a turbulent jet issuing from a cylindrical nozzle to characterise coherent structures evolving in the turbulent boundary layer. The analysis is performed using data from a large-eddy simulation of a Mach 0.4 jet. Azimuthal decomposition of the velocity field in the nozzle shows that turbulent kinetic energy predominantly resides in high azimuthal wavenumbers; the first three azimuthal wavenumbers, that are important for sound generation, contain much lower, but non-zero amplitudes. Using two-point statistics, low azimuthal modes in the nozzle boundary layer are shown to exhibit signif…
Argonne National Laboratory（阿贡国家实验室）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）
The goal of this work is to address two limitations in autoencoder-based models: latent space interpretability and compatibility with unstructured meshes. This is accomplished here with the development of a novel graph neural network (GNN) autoencoding architecture with demonstrations on complex fluid flow applications. To address the first goal of interpretability, the GNN autoencoder achieves reduction in the number nodes in the encoding stage through an adaptive graph reduction procedure. This reduction procedure essentially amounts to flowfield-conditioned node sampling and sensor identifi…
We present turbulent Schmidt number Sc_t estimations above three-dimensional urban canopies, where Sc_t is a property of the flow defined as the ratio of the eddy diffusivity of momentum (K_M) to the eddy diffusivity of mass (D_t). Despite the fact that Sc_t modelling is of great interest, inter alia, for pollutant dispersion simulations conducted via computational fluid dynamics, no universal value is known. Simultaneous measurements of fluid velocity and mass concentration are carried out in a water channel for three staggered arrays of cubical obstacles corresponding to isolated flow, wake-…
In numerical ocean models coast lines change the direction from one grid cell to its neighbor and the value for viscosity is set to be as small as possible. Therefore, model simulations are not converged with resolution and boundary separation points differ in essential properties from flow separation in continuous flow fields. In this paper, we investigate the quality of the representation of boundary separation points in global ocean models. To this end, we apply well established criteria for boundary separation within an idealized ocean model setup. We investigate an eddy-resolving as well …
Coupled Analytical Model for the Internal Boundary Layer Height, Wall Shear Stress and Mean Velocity Behind a Surface Roughness Transition in Boundary-Layer Flow
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad（印度理工学院海德拉巴分校）
Forests play an important role in influencing the wind resource in atmospheric boundary layers and the fatigue life of wind turbines. Due to turbulence, a difficulty in the simulation of the forest effects is that flow statistical and fluctuating content should be accurately resolved using a turbulence-resolved CFD method, which requires a large amount of computing time and resources. In this paper, we demonstrate a fast but accurate simulation platform that uses a lattice Boltzmann method with large eddy simulation on Graphic Processing Units (GPU). The simulation tool is the open-source prog…
We propose a new approach to predict the modulation of wavepackets in shock-containing jets. With a modelled ideally expanded mean flow as input, an approximation of the shock-cell structure is obtained from the parabolised stability equations (PSE) at zero frequency. This solution is then used to define a new shock-containing mean flow, which is a function of the shock-cell wavenumber at each streamwise station. Linearisation of the Navier-Stokes equations around this quasi-periodic mean flow allows us to postulate a solution based on the Floquet ansatz, and further manipulation of the equati…
A large eddy simulation (LES) study of the flow around a 1/4 scale squareback Ahmed body at $Re_H=33,333$ is presented. The study consists of both wall-resolved (WRLES) and wall-modelled (WMLES) simulations, and investigates the bimodal switching of the wake between different horizontal positions. Within a non-dimensional time-window of 1050 convective flow units, both WRLES and WMLES simulations, for which only the near-wall region of the turbulent boundary layer is treated in a Reynolds-averaged sense, are able to capture horizontal (spanwise) shifts in the wake's cross-stream orientation. E…
The stochastic variational approach for geophysical fluid dynamics was introduced by Holm (Proc Roy Soc A, 2015) as a framework for deriving stochastic parameterisations for unresolved scales. This paper applies the variational stochastic parameterisation in a two-layer quasi-geostrophic model for a beta-plane channel flow configuration. We present a new method for estimating the stochastic forcing (used in the parameterisation) to approximate unresolved components using data from the high resolution deterministic simulation, and describe a procedure for computing physically-consistent initial…
We propose a Finite Volume Method for the simulation of elastoviscoplastic flows, modelled after the extension to the Herschel-Bulkley model by Saramito [J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 158 (2009) 154-161]. The method is akin to methods for viscoelastic flows. It is applicable to cell-centred grids, both structured and unstructured, and includes a novel pressure stabilisation technique of the "momentum interpolation" type. Stabilisation of the velocity and stresses is achieved through a "both sides diffusion" technique and the CUBISTA convection scheme, respectively. A second-order accurate tempora…
Numerical simulations of a partially-premixed, turbulent jet diffusion flame stabilised in a hot vitiated co-flow are performed. For auto-igniting flames, an accurate prediction of flame stabilisation, which depends on a delicate balance between turbulent transport and chemical kinetics at the flame base, poses an enormous challenge to conventional turbulent combustion models. Multiple mapping conditioning/large eddy simulation (MMC-LES), a promising tool for modelling turbulence-chemistry interactions, has been successfully applied to simulate a variety of combustion applications involving ga…
Non-equilibrium wall turbulence with mean-flow three-dimensionality is ubiquitous in geophysical and engineering flows. Under these conditions, turbulence may experience a counter-intuitive depletion of the turbulent stresses, which has important implications for modelling and control. Yet, current turbulence theories have been established mainly for statistically two-dimensional equilibrium flows and are unable to predict the reduction in the Reynolds stress magnitude. In the present work, we propose a multiscale model which explains the response of non-equilibrium wall-bounded turbulence und…
